Slowly Falling
by christmasbreakspamwriter
Summary: A collection of moments throughout the Marauders' seventh year at Hogwarts exploring how James and Lily slowly fell in love. Written quickly because I'm not home for long. :)
1. Boarding

September 1, 1977

Lily boarded the train with all her things neatly tucked in to her bags, one suitcase, one backpack, and one purse. She looked up and down the aisles, searching for an empty compartment. She hadn't written to any of her friends all summer except Remus who kept her just enough in-the-loop as to not feel excluded, so she was excited to see them and hear all about what she had missed while she was home. However, what she was most excited about was to find out who the new Head boy was. Remus had written her just enough that she knew he was keeping secrets, and certainly the secret was that he had been given the position.

As she moved through the aisle, Lily's mind wandered thinking how amazing her year was going to be as Head girl. She was going to be the best Head girl that Hogwarts had ever seen. She had a new scheduling system for daily prefect patrols and new ideas on how to expedite all of the introduction tours so even the muggle born students would be able to find their way around the school. She made a promise to herself to be completely unbiased and loved by as many students as interacted with her while also fulfilling every single duty placed on her by Professor Dumbledore.

As Lily searched for a cabin, her train of thought was interrupted by a chipper voice behind her. "Aye, Lily! You aren't going to hold up the line forever, are you?"

Lily turned and grinned widely at a sweet familiar Remus Lupin, who had his arms open wide for a hug. Lily embraced him tightly, and asked him the question she had been dying to know all summer.

"Are you excited to be Head boy?" she said, too confidently for something Remus hadn't confirmed yet, but there were simply no other options, at least not as far as she was concerned.

"No, I am, however, very excited to be working as a prefect once again, this year under who I am positive will be the best Head girl this school has ever seen." Remus continued to grin despite seeing the excitement drain from Lily's face. He knew exactly what shock was coming for Lily soon, and he didn't want to be the one to bear the bad news. "How about we sit in here?" Remus pointed to an empty train car and shuffled in without first hearing Lily's response.

Lily followed in the car, pushing her things into storage below her. She began to question Remus, "how could they not give it to you, who else would be better for the job? Certainly there was a mistake and you will be told upon arrival."

Remus laughed and interrupted her rambling, "I think this year is going to be great despite that I'm not the head boy. Trust Dumbledore, he always knows what's best anyway."

Lily shook her head and turned the conversation away from the dreaded topic, since Remus obviously didn't seem to know either. She began asking him how his summer had been, how had his friends' trip to the beach go, how home life had been since school was out. The two caught up, watching people pass their car in and out, waiting for more friends to arrive.

James hugged his mom and dad one last time before boarding the train. His things were a mess and his mom had been nagging all morning and he was excited to get away from them, no matter how much he loved them and how much he reminded himself they only had good intentions. His things were thrown together in several duffel bags and one gigantic suitcase, which he struggled to maneuver through the aisle. Suddenly, he dropped all of his things and sprinted back off the train, apologizing to the two younger boys he nearly trampled getting out.

"MUM, I forgot my le-" His mother handed him his enveloped, stamped in the recognizable purple wax, as if she knew that James would somehow forget to take the most important thing to school with him.

He hugged and thanked her quickly before getting back on the train and picking up his things, on his way to find Sirius and Remus to gloat- no, not gloat. He promised himself he wouldn't gloat this year. He promised himself and his mother, which was even more important, that he would be poised and respectable and well-behaved and a good Head boy. He had been given an opportunity to show that he was the leader he wanted to be, not just an immature prankster. He wasn't going to give that up this year.

James trudged down the aisle, looking for anybody to sit with, when he crossed a car with a smiling Remus in it. He began to reach for the handle until he saw Evans sitting across from him and decided to just walk off with a quick wave and smile. He needed to be on her good side, and he wasn't going to ruin that by inviting himself into her train car. Besides, she probably needed to hear the news from Remus since he was way better at handling Lily than James would likely ever be.

From the inside of the car, Lily was glad that James didn't get in, but assumed nothing of it until he waved at them. Clutched in his hand was an envelope that looked awfully familiar, but no... it couldn't be James. Then Lily caught a glimpse of the purple wax and immediately knew.

As soon as James was out of sight, Remus prepared himself for the worst.

"HIM?" Lily proclaimed, "Dumbledore chose HIM over you?"

"I think we have to trust Dumbledore this time. Sure, I was a little upset, but it isn't like I'm not still a prefect."

"But James Potter... over you? He has no experience whatsoever and more than that, I think he has lost our house more points himself than any other student combined!"

James, still in earshot, wanted to go and defend himself as he listened to Lily protest his appointment and Remus weakly defend him, but he reminded himself what he had promised himself before leaving and searched for another train car on his own.


	2. Adjustment

September 1, 1977

Lily and James entered the prefect car exactly half an hour after the train departed the station. They had one scheduled hour of a private meeting to collaborate before their meeting with all the prefects. James opened the door for Lily, which she begrudgingly thanked him for. The two sat down across from each other and an awkward moment followed before James broke the silence.

"So, I know I am not what you were expecting," He leaned forward and put his elbows on his knee. "But please, trust me, I am going to try my hardest to make this a good year."

Lily coldly stared at him with her arms crossed sat upright. She didn't believe him and she in no way was going to buy his silly promises.

"Look," James sat up in an attempt to soften the mood. "Why don't you just tell me what ideas you have for this year.. Remus told me you had a lot of great new systems to implement."

Lily uncrossed her arms and reached into her backpack to pull out a notebook.

"I actually have an idea dealing with scheduling prefect patrols, and I know it's unprecedented but," she flipped through her notes, trailing off. "I think this will work much better than the current system."

She handed James the notebook, opened to the correct page which showed a map of the hallways with several different colored arrows surrounding different corridors and passageways. James stared at it and thought as hard as he could about the stories Remus had told him about being a prefect, but couldn't put together what was different about the diagram, or honestly what it even meant in the first place.

"So as you can see here, the red pen represents Gryffindor, the blue Ravenclaw, so on and so forth," Lily started after a blank minute, knowing James would not understand the prefect patrol routes seeing as he had never actually been on one. "So in the past, we have scheduled prefects to walk around their house since they can only deduct points for misbehavior from their own house. However, this has proven flawed because many prefects have chosen to not report a lot of activities to save their own house's points."

James nodded along, watching Lily talk, leaning in, trying his hardest to prove to her that he was listening.

"Well, in this system, prefects would actually walk around a different house, hopefully increasing the number of reports to you and me," Lily looked up from her map and directly at James, who had leaned in a lot closer than she had expected. "Then we can deduct house points and assign detentions as needed."

"This all sounds good to me." James sat up and grinned back at her.

"Yes, and we'll be on a four week schedule so prefects from each house will actually rotate which route they monitor, preventing singling anybody out, you know."

James nodded, despite not fully understanding her idea or seeing what was wrong with the old system.

"So lastly, I also want to pair the prefects up with other prefects from different houses, so there is never any bias."

"I think that sounds great," James processed everything as he spoke, making sure he didn't ask anything she had already said. "So, how do we assign these route schedules?"

"That's what this next meeting is for." Lily was firm on him; he would've known this had he been a prefect before. "We will assign tour groups and daily prefect routes."

"And I'm sure you already covered it, but how will we remember when we're responsible for our rounds?" James stumbled through his words, getting more nervous as Lily stared him down. "It's just that I don't want to forget and with Quidditch and all I think it might be hard to remember a four week schedule."

"I am actually very glad you asked," Lily reached back in her backpack and pulled out a stack of printed papers which she slapped down in front of James. "These are schedules for each prefect to fill in as we assign them today. And here is our master list, which will be hung between our doors in the head wing, so we can each check back in case someone has missed their scheduled rounds."

She handed him the larger "master schedule" and a pen, presumably to fill it out with. James smiled, but inside he was worried he was about to spend this entire meeting- no, the entire year- in Lily's shadow. Still, he wasn't going to let that stop him from being a good headboy. He took both and accepted his job in the upcoming meeting as the scribe.


	3. The First Night

September 1, 1977

James and Lily made the effort to sit near each other to promote a unified image at the dinner table on the first night; however, it seemed like now it was going to be that way indefinitely. Sirius had begun dating Lily's best friend, Marlene, over the break, and while neither James nor Lily were thrilled about the union, neither of them would be finding a new group to sit with at meals, so their two groups grew closer with Peter, Remus and James sitting just two seats away from Lily and Alice.

After the tours with the new Gryffindor first years were done, Lily and James made their way back to the head commons. James tried to strike conversation with Lily about her summer, but was met with mostly dry responses. Lily made attempts at portraying friendliness, but couldn't help but feel like maybe Dumbledore had made a mistake. Whatever had happened, she was going to have to deal with it now.

When they arrived, all of their bags had been placed in the middle of the area separating their rooms, Lily's small pile of neatly packed bags next to James's pile of lumpy, obviously messily thrown together duffel bags.

"You're obviously the much better packer," James chuckled, making any attempt to get her to laugh at this point. He ran his hands nervously through his hair as he spoke. "My mom has been helping me for so long I guess I didn't realize how hard it was to get it all in to just a few bags."

"Actually," Lily laughed, harder than James was expecting since he really didn't say anything funny. "The trick is to use an extension charm on your suitcase."

James shook his head and ran his hands through his hair again, laughing at himself. "Yeah, I would have never thought of that."

"Well, anyway, I'm going to unpack." Lily shuffled towards her door, grabbing her bags as she went.

"Oh, do you need help with anything? I can lift or hang things or really... anything you need." James stumbled, obviously nervous, but just trying to make a good start to the year with Lily.

"Oh, no. I'm good for now. Thank you though." Lily pushed open her door to unveil the biggest room she had ever lived in.

It was gorgeous, and she stood in awe for several moments before actually beginning to unpack her belongings. All of the walls were a deep red-brown and her bed was bigger than any she had at home or in her dorm. She had known when she got the letter telling her to pack queen sized sheets that she would be getting a larger bed, but for some reason, seeing it in person with the room and the matching wardrobe and nightstand, it was bigger than she expected. Lily plopped her suitcase on to her bed, which was oddly in the corner of the room-as if the room didn't have enough space for the bed to be centered along the wall.

Lily decided she would move the bed after she had unpacked her other things, since it wasn't her top priority anyway and she needed somewhere to put her suitcase while she worked.

Lily then began unloading all her clothes, robes in the closet organized neatly by head girl uniforms to skirts to pants to blouses and finally to coats tucked away in the corner. She quickly changed to hang even the headgirl uniform she had worn, since it hadn't gotten dirty and she was about to start real work decorating her room. She loaded her casual clothes in the wardrobe outside her closet: tshirts at the top; shorts and leggings down a drawer; underwear, socks, and bras right beneath that. Everything had its place in her room and she was determined to have it all done tonight.

Once her clothes were unpacked, her toiletries went next. She hung her bag on the inside of the wardrobe along with her shower cap, shoes, and robe. Then came her desk supplies. Lily meticulously unloaded everything in her bags, putting everything away neatly as she went. Lastly though, was the bed, which simply needed to be moved before she could even think about putting sheets and bedding on it.

Lily took the remainder of her things off her bed, the pillows, sheets, blankets all rested on the floor, but the framed pictures, which Lily hadn't yet set up because she was unsure with the placement of her nightstand, she placed on top of her desk chair for safe keeping. She began pulling at the bed frame with all her strength, but it wouldn't budge. She tried to wedge her way between the bed and the wall to push the bed, but had no more luck. She struggled for several minutes, trying every which way before eventually giving up and deciding to do what she was really trying to avoid all along.

Lily propped her door open and walked across the hallway to James's room then knocked reluctantly on the door. She waited a few short seconds before knocking again, a little louder. There was a small thud and then some shuffles and James came to the door, disheveled and obviously just woken up wearing only a tshirt and boxers without even having his glasses on.

"Oh, I'm sorry..." Lily stuttered. "I didn't realize it was so late."

"That's fine; dont worry about it," James opened the door wider, revealing his still largely packed up room and a bed without sheets and a twin sized blanket strewn across. "Did you need help with something?"

"Actually, yes, but if you're sleeping, don't let me bother you." Lily began to back towards her room sheepishly, feeling bad about waking James.

"No, wait, what did you need?" James stepped in to the hallway and rubbed his eyes. "I can help, just tell me what you need."

"My bed is in the corner of my room," verbalizing it, Lily understood how silly she must sound for throwing a fit about nothing in the middle of the night. "And I wanted it in the center but it's too heavy for me to move on my own."

"Oh yeah, just give me a minute to put my glasses on and I'll come right over to help." James grinned, walked back in his room to change, and hoped Lily hadn't glanced in enough to see that he hadn't made any progress whatsoever.

Lily stood outside his door waiting for what felt like forever until James walked back out with sweatpants and his glasses on.

They trotted in to Lily's room, where James tried to move the bed on his own. When he failed at pulling the bed, Lily started pulling with him and slowly but surely, the two moved the bed far enough that Lily could get herself between the wall and push.

They moved the bed with few words, not exchanging much more than glances. When they finished moving the bed, Lily reached for her sheets and started to make the bed. To her surprise, James just continued helping with no thoughts about it.

"James, I know this is awfully nosey of me, but did you bring sheets to school this year?" Lily laughed as they stretched her sheets over her bed.

"Well, I did, but I guess I missed the part of the letter where I needed to bring _bigger _sheets." He ran his hands through his hair and piled her pillows up against the headboard. "But, I already wrote my mom and I'm sure she'll have some in the mail tomorrow so it isn't like I'll be without them forever."

"I have an extra set if you'd like them." Lily and James both stopped making the bed and made direct eye contact. "I always bring an extra so that I have some to put on when I wash. Granted they aren't as nice as my others, but they are sheets and that's more than what you have right now."

"Actually, I'd really appreciate if I could use those."

"Yeah! No problem, they're just in my bag next to my.." Lily trailed off and shook her head.

"Next to what?"

"My mattress topper, which I did not remember to put on my bed while we were making it."

At this point, James was exhausted, but he wasn't going to pass up an opportunity to prove to Lily that he had changed and was going to actually be helpful. He started stripping the bed again and grabbed the mattress topper right away. Lily smiled, and didn't say anything, but started helping.

Once the two of them had reassembled the bed once again, Lily sat down on the edge of the bed and invited James to sit next to her to be friendly. A moment passed without talking before James interrupted.

"I totally understand why you needed this." he laughed and laid back. "This is a hundred times more comfortable than my bed."

"Oh yeah, it really makes a huge difference." Lily tried to force conversation, but it didn't work, so she picked up the extra unopened pack of sheets and handed them right to James, who stood up after realizing that she was very politely trying to make him leave.

"Is there anything else I can do for you tonight?" he yawned.

"Oh, gosh, it is really late, isn't it?" Lily laughed. "No, I think I have everything here covered, but thank you so much."

"No," he waved the sheets as he pushed his way almost out the door. "Thank you for these. I will get them back to you as soon as I can."

"Don't worry about it." Lily smiled, already climbing under the covers of her bed. "Have a good night, Potter."

"Goodnight, Evans." James softly shut Lily's door and walked right back over to his room where he immediately plopped down in his bed. He fell asleep thinking about how maybe things would be better this year. Lily had been nice to him while they were working in her room, and that may not have been much, but it felt like a good sign. Either way, it was only the first night and he had all year to prove himself to her.


	4. Changing Dynamics

September 9, 1977

James had always been in charge of his life. He was a leader in his friend group, a captain of the Quidditch team, and overall one of the most known boys in school- regardless of the reasons for which he was known. He intended to keep that going as head boy; however, the first week proved to him that he was not the leader that he believed himself to be. The first week of school brought several meetings, and James was not in command of them like he had wanted to be. Lily took charge of every prefect meeting, which she made agendas for each time detailing exactly what would be talked about. No minute was left unaccounted for. While James was grateful in a small way that he had less responsibilities, he couldn't also help but notice that no one seemed to respect him as much as they did Lily. When first year students needed help finding classes, they asked her. When prefects needed to assign detentions, they went to her. Even Remus, who James had sworn would treat them fairly, went to Lily when he had problems with his rounds or when he wanted to deduct house points. James was beginning to feel like maybe this year he wouldn't be in charge of everything like he had planned.

In other ways though, James felt like his first week had gone exceedingly well. He knew he wasn't earning her respect quickly, but at the very least, Lily hadn't flat out told him to rot in hell or go die somewhere. He had taken a step back, however unwillingly, and realized that Lily was a pretty clear leader. He admired how hard she worked in her classes, which they shared most of. She had nice handwriting, which she used to take notes on everything her professors said and take notes when prefects asked questions. James noticed that Lily always made sure to ask the prefects if they needed help with anything, and she was the first to jump at covering rounds when someone needed it. She was never late to any of the early morning rounds that the two of them were assigned, even though he knew that secretly the prefects were taking advantage of how nice she was in volunteering for the 6 am shifts. Lily was good at speaking to everybody in the room and making sure everybody felt included. Even James, who wanted to be in charge could appreciate that Lily never explicitly left him out.

In a lot of ways, James was earning some respect for Lily. He hadn't spent time with her really at all during their time at Hogwarts, and now, going on morning rounds with her and attending meetings with her and being in all the same classes, he was beginning to realize how much he admired her. She was very organized, from her morning teas, which she brought to rounds every single morning, to marking off their shared calendar every night with which prefects had been on time, early, late, or missed their rounds altogether.

As the end of his first week as head boy came to a close though, James settled in his bed, staring at the single wadded up sheet of paper that he had taped to his wall as a reminder. "I will be a good Head Boy," it read. This was simple enough when James wrote it. He had imagined that this meant not pranking people as much and deducting points from Gryffindor sometimes, not just Slytherin. Now though, he realized just how much he was really going to have to commit to make this happen. He grabbed the paper from the wall and flipped it over. He scribbled a new promise to himself, a list of things he was going to do, not just that he would be a good head boy, but how exactly planned on proving to everyone that he was the right choice.

Lily, Alice, and Remus sat in the library exactly where they always did on Friday nights, doing homework in silence as usual. The tradition had been in place since fifth year when they all decided it was really time to buckle down if they wanted to be considered for any respectable jobs out of school. The three had worked diligently for about an hour before Alice decided she had little left to do, since it was just the first week.

"So how is it being the Head girl, Lily?" she asked, closing all her books.

"It's good. I think we're going to have a good year." Lily didn't lift her eyes from her work though seeing as she really didn't want to indulge in the conversation, knowing where it was going to lead.

"How about James?" Alice jumped on the question despite Lily's discomfort, and Remus shuttered trying hard to focus on his work. "How is he as head boy?"

Lily closed her books this time, which made Remus look up to listen. "Actually, he isn't as awful as I thought he would be." Lily shrugged it off, giving him as little credit as possible since Alice would definitely read way too far into anything she said. "He stays mostly quiet at all our meetings, but he hasn't been late for a single patrol and he hasn't gotten himself in to any trouble yet."

"He really does want to do a good job, I think." Remus popped in, giving just enough to keep Lily from berating James's performance too harshly. "He told me this summer he was going to take the job seriously."

"Well, he hasn't made a fool of himself, but he also hasn't taken any leads yet, so I don't know just how it's going to end up while I'm gone for a whole week later this semester."

"You're leaving for a week?" Remus closed his books. The group was officially done studying and had now moved on to gossiping. "Why?"

"It's Petunia's wedding, and my parents want me to go."

"Are you her maid of honor?" Alice was obviously more interested in this, but Lily almost wished she had just stuck with asking about James by now.

"No, I am not. I'm just going as a guest." Lily began to pack her bag back up. All of the conversations that had arisen just continued to make her more uncomfortable than the last and she wasn't going to stay to be embarrassed with every topic that came up.

"Well that's still going to be more fun than being stuck here studying." Alice tried to bring the conversation back around lightly.

"I think I'd almost rather be here. Petunia doesn't want me there, and I need to focus on my schoolwork this year." Lily stood up to walk out, but just as she did, so did Remus. "Anyway, I'm going to walk back to my room and finish studying there."

Lily walked away as quickly as she could, trying to avoid either of them following her. Her whole summer had revolved around that wedding and she didn't want to talk about it anymore. Despite how fast she was walking and the signs that she did not want to talk to either of them, Remus caught up to her.

"I'm sorry you're sister is being stuck up still." he tried to make things better, but couldn't find just the right words to say. "It must be awful to not be included in her big day."

Lily nodded, but didn't respond.

"And please just give James a chance to be a good head boy. He wants it." At this point, Lily stopped in her tracks and just stared at Remus, who had stopped abruptly with her.

"I will," she said "It's just going to take a lot for him to do that."

Without saying anything else, Lily walked away and this time, Remus wouldn't follow her. She walked all the way to her room, slammed her door shut, crawled in bed, and cried softly in to her pillow for a few moments before falling asleep thinking about how much simpler life was before she got her Hogwarts letter. Lily dreamed about being a bridesmaid in Petunia's wedding, wearing a pretty long dress and helping her sister do her hair and makeup. She dreamed about her sister borrowing an old necklace or a bracelet for her wedding and gifting her the prettiest new earrings to match. It was a lovely thing to think of, but as soon as Lily woke up, she would remember that none of it could ever be.


	5. Potions

September 12, 1977

The first week of potions class had been boring. Slughorn reviewed safety procedures and how to properly clean your cauldron to prevent cross contamination far more times than any single student felt necessary. Lily took advantage of this time to get ahead of her potions studies though, since this year she was determined to prove that she was not reliant on Severus for her grades. She sat front row, where she always did, and opened up her notebook to a new page, dated it, and sat waiting for Marlene to come sit with her.

Remus sat behind her and made polite conversation about their shared excitement for the semester until Peter arrived and sat at his desk. Lily waited a little longer, wondering what could possibly be making Marlene so late for class. She turned back to her desk and sat quietly until she heard Marlene's familiar laugh. She turned towards the door with a smile, expecting to wave her friend over, but instead watched her walk right back to the back of the room where Sirius and James had been sitting. She exchanged a few words that Lily couldn't make out with James, who stood up and moved to another empty desk in the room. Marlene sat next to Sirius where James had once sat and Lily turned around, hoping that if she couldn't sit with Marlene, at least someone good would walk in. After a quick glance around the room, her options were slim with James, Severus, and a girl she hadn't formally met and didn't know the name of, but recognized for deducting house points from her the year previous. It seemed like nobody else would be entering before class, so Lily settled hoping Slughorn would let her work alone.

Slughorn walked in just moments after Lily had decided not to search for another partner. He addressed the class in his usual jovial manner and then reminded everyone that they _must_ partner up for the day's work. Lily watched Severus move his way swiftly to the front of the classroom towards her, but without thinking she picked up her things and walked straight back where she plopped her things on the desk with none other than James Potter. It wasn't her plan initially, but anything would be better than being paired with Severus this year.

James didn't say anything to ruin the moment, but he was internally very pleased that Lily had chosen to sit with him. He realized that her choices were slim at best, but it was a step in the right direction. Besides, the only other two partners were Severus and Abby, who James had gone on one unsuccessful date with in fifth year. As far as he was concerned, this was the best start to his year in potions possible.

Slughorn started class with a lecture, which Lily took thorough notes on. James scribbled down what he could so that when it came time to compare, Lily didn't totally think he was spaced out. As Slughorn was explaining the potion, James made sure to scrawl out what ingredients they needed, how long to heat it, when to stir it, what to cut and what to squeeze, every detail he could think of to impress Lily. Lily's notes were more organized and made more sense, but at least he wasn't going to miss any information. Slughorn finished his lecture and instructed each group to gather supplies and ingredients.

James turned to Lily and offered to get the ingredients from the cabinet if she would set up the work space. She agreed, a little surprised by his initiative, but not upset with it. Lily cleared their table and set up their cauldron along with cutting boards, knives, gloves, measuring pieces, and goggles for safety. James returned after just a few moments sloppily carrying all 10 ingredients in his arms. He dropped them on the table before realizing how childish he must've looked. Lily let out a sigh and flipped her book open to the instructions page for Hiccoughing Solution.

Without having said anything yet, James felt awkward since the rest of the room had erupted in conversation.

"So have you ever brewed..." he paused, realizing he had written down everything but the name of the potion.

"Hiccoughing Solution?" Lily glanced up at him, almost laughing.

"Yeah, hiccoughing solution." He ran his hands through his hair embarrassed that he could've missed such a vital detail.

"No, but it doesn't look like it should be too difficult." She flipped through her text books once again. "We should get good marks for this one."

"I wasn't totally worried. You're a potions whiz for sure." James chuckled out, but no response.

They went the rest of their potions class making very little conversation. Lily would give James small instructions and largely put him in charge of stirring the potion while she prepared the later ingredients. The potion finished to perfection, almost identical to the textbook's picture: a deep yellow, runny, and steamy mixture. Lily and James stood proudly beside it as Slughorn walked around the room examining.

"Remus and Peter seem to have made a good potion." Slughorn nodded, proud of them but not surprised. The two high-fived and started cleaning up. Slughorn made his way down the aisles, judging each pot for its color, consistency, and detail to instructions.

When Slughorn looked at James and Lily's potion, he exclaimed with glee how wonderful it was.

"Why, the two of you should have started working together a long time ago if this is how your potions were going to come along!" he laughed. James and Lily exchanged uncomfortable glances at the notion, but Slughorn moved right on to the next table, where Marlene and Sirius sat confused in front of a light purple brew.

"Now, Ms. McKinnon, Mr. Black, I'm not sure what you decided to brew today, but it certainly wasn't Hiccoughing Solution." Sirius and Marlene exchanged glances with their friends across the room still completely unsure of what they did wrong in their potion. Marlene leaned over and whispered something in Sirius's ear just quiet enough that Lily couldn't hear.

Lily quickly turned to James. "Did you hear what she said?"

"No, no I didn't," James responded quickly, unsure of why Lily would be so offset by a whisper. Lily turned and huffed as she began to clean up her cauldron and workspace. James shuffled to help her since she was obviously upset and he didn't want to feed in to that.

"Now class, as you clean your spaces, be sure to listen to all the information I will be giving you." Slughorn made his way back to the front of the room after examining all the potions in the room. "This year, in an attempt to improve comprehension, I will be giving marks for a new assignment done outside of class." There was an audible moan in the classroom, but Slughorn pressed on. "After each potion making class, I would like for you to meet with your partner and make a list of what happened during the potion brewing process that could have been better. I want a parchment turned in by the next potion brewing class period explaining what the two of you could have done better, differently, or if your potion went perfectly, why it did."

Lily sighed at the thought of having to meet with James again after class every week, but reminded herself at least it wasn't Severus and at least it would be easy considering Slughorn had said their potion was perfect. James and Lily worked quietly to clean up their workspace before class was dismissed. When the two went to leave, they both went looking for their respective best friends, who had left just moments before them together no doubt.

"Do you have any classes after this?" Lily turned to James and asked.

"No, actually, is this your last class of the day?"

"Yeah, it is. I was just wondering if maybe you wanted to walk back to our rooms together?" Lily smiled at James, making an attempt to be friendly since he was her only friend- no acquaintance- left in the class.

"I would like that a lot." He gleamed back at her. He grabbed all of his stuff and they both started out the door.


	6. Monday Mornings

September 19, 2019

Mondays were hard days for James. Every weekday morning, he and Lily did their early morning patrols from 5:45, when they met outside their doors, to 8:00, when they began to head back to their rooms. Mondays were only especially hard because after his rounds, he had a full day of classes and a head meeting directly followed by a prefect meeting after dinner, then it was homework until he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore and he would go to bed only to get up at 4:45 the next morning to be ready for his 5:45 walk with Lily the next day. This Monday, however, was going to be the best one so far. Lily and James had met up several times throughout the week to discuss James running this prefect meeting and preparing him to do so. This meeting was big because they were going to discuss the first Hogsmeade visit of the year and James would have to explain exactly where every prefect needed to be to ensure no younger students were left behind. It was also important though because it was his chance to prove to Lily that he was going to be a good leader. Through potions class and their morning walks, he felt like she was beginning to warm up to him, but he couldn't tell for sure.

One thing was for sure though, if this meeting went well, he was going to ask Lily on a date on the Hogsmeade trip this weekend. He finally felt like she was comfortable enough around him to know that, unlike in years previous, he wasn't just trying to sleep with her or add her on to the list of girls he had swooning over him. He was more mature than that now and he genuinely liked Lily. She was nice and funny and smart and everything he wanted to bring home to his parents, and her looks were just a bonus on to all of that for James. All he needed now was to make a good impression in this meeting so Lily would be so impressed she would say yes.

James was early this morning. He pressed his head boy uniform so everything looked pristine, shaved his face to look extra clean, and even combed his hair to make sure he looked extra professional. He walked out of his room at 5:40, earlier even than Lily and knocked on her door. Silence, then a shuffle, then a holler "Come in!"

James hesitantly opened the door to see Lily still in her pajamas, curling her hair. "I am so sorry," she stumbled. "I am just running a tad late today because my eyeliner and my hair and a lot just hasn't cooperated with me this morning." she rambled on and on about how unprofessional she was being until she finally looked up at James and grinned.

"You look really nice," she said through a big smile.

He stood by her bed, hands in pockets, grinning while he watched her scramble to get ready. "Thank you."

The two stared at each other smiling for a brief moment before Lily returned to curling her hair.

"Is there anything I can do to help you?" he asked after another moment of silence.

"Will you grab my uniform from my closet? It's all the way to the left in the corner."

James walked over to the closet and stopped just short of the door, finding himself fixated on a framed picture hanging right outside of the door. The picture was a still photo, a muggle picture no doubt, of Lily and a boy who was just barely taller than her, blonde, and pale kissing her on the cheek. They were dressed nicely, so the picture must have been taken before a date or maybe a church service. James's heart dropped just a tiny bit as he pushed back and grabbed her uniform out of the closet. He brought the uniform over to Lily who hadn't noticed his pause or that he had seen the picture at all. She thanked him and stepped behind her wardrobe to change.

James quickly scanned the room to see if there were any other pictures of this boy, maybe there was an explanation other than what he had assumed. Besides, Lily had never talked about a boyfriend before and they spent two hours talking on their rounds every single morning. Surely, it would've come up at some point. He didn't see any other evidence of this boy's existence and tried to put on a happy face for his morning walk, but couldn't help that he had been a little shaken by his sudden need to change his plans.

Lily popped out from behind her wardrobe, slipped her shoes on, and grabbed her usual mug with her morning tea already ready for her, and the two were out the door and on their way by 6:00, technically, on time.

"So are you excited to be leading our meeting tonight, Potter?" Lily asked.

"Yeah, I am really excited to be able to prove myself to everyone." James nervously laughed and ran his hands through his hair. "I don't think they all expect much from me, you know?"

"Oh Potter," Lily handed him her tea and immediately started to comb his hair back over with her fingers. "Don't do that, you worked so hard to look presentable today."

"Thanks, Evans." he laughed "Always looking out for me."

"Now in all seriousness, I do think you're going to do a great job as lead." she took her tea back and sipped from it. "You look the part, now you just have to play the part."

"Well, I actually decided I would take a note from your book and I made an agenda," he pulled a folded up piece of parchment from his pocket. "It isn't nearly as detailed, but it does include all my talking points and things I think I'll forget."

Lily walked closer and read the agenda over James's shoulder. "I think it looks great. It has everything I would have included... prefect report time, departure time, carriage assignments, and return times."

James smiled knowing that Lily approved of his work. It eased his stomach about the morning to imagine that maybe today wouldn't be a total bust. He talked more about how he planned to make sure everybody wrote down their assignments so they'd remember and how he would be sure to remember to ask for questions at the end.

The conversation continued until they were basically repeating back and forth the same information, which Lily found odd. Usually their morning talks flowed smoothly, and nobody was ever up to catch misbehaving, so they were never interrupted. However, this morning, Lily felt like James was hiding something from her.

Lily broke the boring conversation about the prefect meeting by changing the subject entirely. "I need some advice."

"Yeah," James was completely caught off guard and it showed, he nervously ran his hands through his hair, messing it up again even though Lily had just fixed it. "What are you having problems with?"

"Look, if I tell you this, you really have to promise not to tell anybody. Not even Marlene knows this." she set her mug down on a ledge in the courtyard where they had made their rounds to and fixed James's hair without even thinking.

"Well, I promise not to tell anybody." James leaned down so Lily could reach the top of his head before they walked off, leaving Lily's poor tea mug behind.

"I was home all summer, right?"

"Yeah, that would make sense." James laughed at Lily's rhetorical question. Whatever it was must've bothered her because she almost never gossiped and she certainly never used rhetorical questions.

"Oh hush, smart ass." Lily rolled her eyes and continued. "Well, I was home all summer and none of my friends from here really seemed interested in hanging out."

James and Lily walked through the library checking up and down the aisles for anything out of the ordinary.

"Usually when I'm home, I go to Severus because he lives nearby and we were really good friends even outside of Hogwarts." Lily sighed because she knew where this was going and she dreaded telling the embarrassing parts of the story. "Anyway, this summer, since Severus and I are no longer friends, I thought it would be a good idea to get a job to occupy myself with, so I picked up a waitressing job at a local restaurant."

"I don't see any problems so far." James poked fun at her since she was obviously having trouble telling the story. "What was so bad about this restaurant?"

"Nothing about it was bad, really. I just was spending all my time there, and naturally I met a boy who would come in every day after dinner rush and order the same thing and ask me to sit with him. I always did, and he always tipped me really well, and after about a week, he asked me to go on a date with him. I said yes, and we started going on dates about once a week."

Lily could see that James was nodding and smiling to support her, not because he was truly interested in the story. His face showed hurt underneath the forced smile.

"So he asked me to be his girlfriend right before I came back to Hogwarts, and I didn't want to say no because he was so nice, but I feel awful for not telling him everything." she rushed to conclude what she could before she hurt James anymore than she already did.

"Where does he think you are now?"

"Just boarding school."

"And does he know that you're a witch? Or even that magic exists?"

"No, and I think if I told him, he'd think I'm crazy just like Petunia does."

"Well, when will you see him again?"

"October 14th, at Petunia's wedding."

"Oh that's a tough one..." James pondered on it. He wondered if he should tell her to dump him so he could have his chance with Lily. He wrestled with himself over what would really be fair to Lily. "I think if you really like him though, you're going to have to tell him that you're a witch."

"See, the thing is, I don't think I want that." Lily nervously ran her hands through her hair. "I don't think I want to invite him in to that part of my life.

James stopped walking, smiled at her and fixed her hair. "Oh Evans," he mocked "don't do that, you worked so hard to look professional today." Lily laughed at the joke, but James could see that something was really bothering her underneath it. Her eyes were welling up with tears and he wasn't entirely sure if he should hug her or crack another joke. "If you can't let him know about this much of your life, then I think you know what to do about it."

Lily nodded, she knew she was going to break up with him anyway, but she hadn't said it out loud and saying it out loud made it more real just how much she was going to hurt him.

"What's his name?"

Lily laughed and pushed what were almost tears out of her eyes. "Gosh, you'll never guess."

"It isn't James is it?" James's eyes widened, he didn't understand what name would be so funny.

"No, it is not James." she started walking again after collecting herself. "It's Evan."

"Oh gosh, Evans, you're dating a boy with the same name as you?" James threw his hands in the air overdramatically, aiming to make her laugh.

"_Actually Potter,_ my name is Lily. You are the only person who calls me Evans." she did laugh at James's theatrics, but stopped to point that out.

"Well, I will call you Lily when you call me James." he raised his eyebrows at her, knowing she would never concede.

"In your dreams, Potter."

They marched along, a little closer than before but still silently.

"So I guess the advice I really needed is..." she broke the silence, but didn't speak loudly. "Do I mail him and break up with him in a letter? Or do I wait until October to do it in person?"

James thought for a long moment, again debating with himself if he should be selfish and tell her to do it immediately. He couldn't ask her out tonight anyway though considering she had just told him this morning. Either way he did it, he wasn't going to be taking her to Hogsmeade this weekend, so his decision was even harder to make. "I guess that depends on how quickly you want to let this go."

They approached their doors as James gave Lily that final bit of advice, and where they normally parted ways, Lily stopped and hugged James around the neck. James wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, turning his head down just enough that he wasn't in her neck but could still smell her perfume. "Thanks for the advice" she whispered before letting go. He backed away and let out a weak "no problem" before they both walked in to their rooms and continued about their Mondays.


	7. Head Boy James

September 19, 1977

James took lots of deep breaths in the mirror as he combed his hair. He tucked his shirt in and smoothed out all the wrinkles in his vest. He had to make sure everything was absolutely perfect for his first lead meeting. He had gone over his agenda a hundred times over, but still he couldn't help stop nervous sweating. One last deep breath and he headed out the door to meet Lily for their brief head meeting before a prefect wide meeting. He headed up to the fifth floor to the prefects commons, right next to the bathrooms. He began setting the chairs out and writing on the chalkboard behind him the agenda just like Lily always did. His handwriting wasn't nearly as nice, but he made an honest attempt at it.

When James was almost completely done setting up the room, Lily walked in with a full book bag and a paper towel wrapped around something in hand.

"You skipped dinner, Potter." she laughed, and pushed her hand out towards him to reveal just two rolls wrapped in towels. "You won't do yourself any favors by not eating before a big presentation."

James accepted the rolls and thanked her, but largely went about his business readying the room for the upcoming meeting.

"Are you nervous?" Lily broke the silence while setting out chairs.

"Extremely," James's voice wavered, trying not to show how nervous he really was. "Can you rewrite my agenda? It just looks so much nicer when you do it."

"Yeah, of course." Lily wanted to help in any way, but couldn't find the words. She had never seen James nervous, he was practically the embodiment of confidence most days. He was always cocky and arrogant when he was talking to his friends, so it should be no different talking to prefects who he was in charge of, but Lily could still tell this was really getting to him. She started erasing the chalkboard to rewrite his agenda, settling on the fact that this was the most helpful thing she could do right now.

"I think I have everything." James mumbled, sitting down and shoving the rolls in his mouth. "I have my agenda, I brought paper for everyone to write things down on, I have my assignments list."

"You are going to be fine." Lily finished up writing the agenda and then sat next to James, who had just finished scarfing down his food. "I don't know why this is weighing on you so much. You're never like this."

"I just want this to be a good year, you know." James sat back in his seat all the way and huffed. "I want them to take me seriously, and they don't right now because I'm practically the only head boy ever who hasn't been a prefect first."

"Look, they're all just mad that they aren't head boy." Lily nodded along, honestly, convincing herself as she explained. "You just have to know that Dumbledore made the right decision no matter what. He wouldn't have given you the job if he thought you wouldn't make a good head."

"Not even you believed in me, though." James ran his hands through his hair, expecting Lily to scold him. Instead she reached over softly and fixed it. "I heard you talking to Remus on the train. I know you don't think I should have this position."

Lily took a deep breath before continuing. She stopped fixing James's hair and put her hand on his knee. "I know I didn't believe in you before, but I said all of those things out of anger. I just wanted this year to be perfect, and in my head, that meant Remus and I would be doing this together. I didn't want to believe that you had changed."

"What if you're right though? This has been an every day struggle. Someone who is ready for the job, like you, wouldn't have to think about every single decision. I have to fight my instincts on everything just to get half of it right."

"Well then, that just proves how hard you're working for it." Lily nodded and paused for a long moment. James started to tear up and she could see the exhaustion in his face peeking through. "I wouldn't want to do this with anybody else."

James wiped his eyes after another long pause. Neither of them mentioned the tears and both moved on to getting ready for the meeting. This hadn't been a normal Monday. Normal Monday's consisted of James and Lily discussing what the meeting would entail and Lily double and even triple checking that James knew exactly what to say, but today Lily trusted James to do a good job.

Just as the meeting was about to start, James lined himself up behind the podium and straightened out his uniform one last time. "How does my hair look?" he turned to Lily, brushing it over with his hands.

"A little too clean." she grinned and ran her hands messily through his dark hair. "You don't look like you with your hair all neat."

James smiled back at Lily and they sat there for a moment silently, just exchanging smiles when Remus, the first of the prefects, walked in. They quickly snapped out of their moment and returned to their normal spots, but not before Remus noticed what had just happened.

The meeting was going extremely well. James delivered all of the information about the Hogsmeade visit and made sure everybody was aware of their positions and duties. He was confident and spoke well and didn't miss a beat. Lily sat back and admired his public speaking skills and wondered if maybe he was as nervous as he had been just an hour earlier before every Quidditch game where she only saw the arrogant, confident side of him. She was impressed by how well he had pulled it together and for the first time, she didn't question one bit why Dumbledore gave him the head title.

"Alright, does anybody have any questions?" James waited momentarily, looking around the room for hands. "Alright, well if that's all good then, I'm going to let Ev- Lily talk to you about rounds." Lily smiled despite the fact that he had almost called her Evans in front of a room full of people who she did not by any means want referring to her by a nickname.

"Rounds have been going well so far." Lily started, standing up and moving towards the front of the room. "We haven't had anybody miss their rounds so far this semester, which is just fantastic. Has anybody run in to any issues? Should Potter or I know about anything?"

There was silence and then a Slytherin sixth year named Jessica raised her hand. "I have a really big charms exam tomorrow and I'm supposed to do rounds tonight. Can someone cover me while I study?"

Lily nodded, she saw no issue with covering for the girl. "Of course, I can do your rounds tonight. Everybody, your grades are important, so feel free to speak up if you need help like that. I'm sure we can always work something out for you."

The Hufflepuff who normally did rounds with Jessica raised his hand, "I have the same exam, can you cover my rounds too?"

Lily was stumped here because she didn't want to break rules and walk alone. She was about to ask for volunteers when James chimed in, "I can take your rounds tonight. Just in the future try to let us know in advance."

Lily was satisfied with his answer and nodded in agreement. "Any other questions? Any other conflicts I should know about?" She was met with silence, so she concluded the meeting and everybody started to leave.

Remus walked to the front where Lily was congratulating James as prefects filed out.

"Hey, Lily, I can take those rounds for you if you need me to. I didn't have any today, and I know they're just taking advantage of how nice you are." he offered gently.

"Well, you know the rules are we have to walk in boy/girl pairs, so if James wants to go back to his room earlier, that'd be fine!" she appreciated the offer, but couldn't find it in herself to break any rules.

"I'm fine. I know you've probably got homework to do, Moony" James nodded, hoping Remus would take the hint and not pry any further. Remus seemed to understand and backed off quickly.

James and Lily stayed after to clean up the room, but hurried because they had both accepted a second set of rounds that started in less than half an hour.

"Do you think Jessica and Henry were just taking advantage of us?" Lily asked as they walked out, ready to start their second rounds of the day.

"Oh, for sure." James laughed. "Why? Did you think they were being serious?"

"Well, I trusted that she had an exam at least. Who lies about that?"

"Oh, I'm sure there is an exam, but I'm also sure she isn't studying for charms of all things."

"Why not charms?" Lily asked, genuinely perplexed.

"Well because it's the easiest class we take here."

"Really?" Lily crossed her arms, a little upset that James had even made the assumption that Charms was easy.

"Yeah, I'd get it if she was stuck on a Potions or a Divination exam, but Charms is easy." James was back to being his normal arrogant self it seemed.

"My lowest marks are actually in Charms." Lily said almost embarrassed.

James immediately realized just how offensive what he said was and backtracked. "Well, it being the easiest doesn't mean it's easy per se..."

"No, it's fine. Next time I'm having Charms trouble, I guess I know who to talk to." Lily trailed off and a long period of silence followed. They walked down the hallways, passing people left and right, not coming along any trouble. James wanted to break the silence, but couldn't find anything to talk about.

They walked through the courtyard and Lily started laughing hysterically. "Did I leave my tea out this morning?" she forced through laughter pointing at a ledge just next to the library.

"Hmm, I guess you did." James laughed as they made their way over to the mug still sitting exactly where Lily had left it the morning before. He picked it up and dumped its contents into the grass. He handed it to her, making a face of disgust at the smell it was carrying after sitting out a whole day.

She took the mug and they joked lightly about it as they walked in to an almost empty library. At the front, there were scattered students studying, so Lily and James brought their voices down to a whisper. They headed towards the back, paying little attention since this was always the most boring part of their rounds. They were almost out of the Restricted Section when Lily stopped dead in her tracks, staring straight down the very first aisle of books. James was confused when she stopped and backtracked to see why she had stopped.

James hollered as soon as he saw what Lily was staring at with disgust and awe. Jessica and Henry were sitting in the window sill snogging with half of Jessica's shirt pulled up. "Hey, break that up!" Lily dropped her mug and it shattered as it hit the ground in the library. With all the commotion at the back, everybody in the library was now staring at them.

"Ten points from Slytherin, ten points from Hufflepuff." James shook his head as Jessica and Henry separated from each other. Jessica straightened out her shirt and James buried his face in his hands. "You both have detention tomorrow."

Lily backed behind James; this was not her area of expertise.

"I can't have detention tomorrow." Henry interrupted as James continued scolding them for immature behavior. "I have rounds."

"Lily and I will do your rounds, and you'll be lucky if you have rounds ever again after this stunt." James rolled his eyes and the two scurried out of the library while the rest of the few students watched. All of them cleared out shortly after, sensing that they shouldn't be witnessing what was going on.

Lily cleaned up the shattered mug off the floor and James paced the now empty library.

"What are we supposed to do about that?" James asked frantically.

"Exactly what you did." Lily said throwing the last bits of her mug away. "You handled that perfectly." She was ashamed that she hadn't been any help whatsoever, but she was at least grateful that James was there to handle it.

"Do we tell Dumbledore?" He stumbled, still pacing the library.

"Yes of course we tell Dumbledore." Lily stood watching him pace. "We can go to him after our rounds in the morning."

"I can't tomorrow, Lil, I have an exam in Muggles Studies I really need to study for." James only got more frantic as he paced, but stopped at Lily when he realized she was just blankly staring at him. He assumed it was because of his insinuation that he needed to study for muggles studies, but he really did need to or else he wasn't going to pass.

"We can go now." She said softly, thrown off by the fact that he had called her anything other than Evans. "Rounds are almost over anyway, and this is important." James nodded in agreement and they made their way all the way to Dumbledore's office, not saying a word about the meeting or Henry and Jessica or even about Lily's broken mug.


	8. Common Talk

September 19, 1977

Dumbledore eased both James and Lily's minds about the incident before and sent them on their way. He assured them that Jessica and Henry would be replaced as prefects and asked them to cover their rounds until he could find replacements. They both agreed, but deep down both were worried that two sets of rounds per day would inevitably tire them out. They left his office in much better moods than they had gone in and chatted their whole way back to the Gryffindor Common Room.

When they got to the Gryffindor commons, they found Remus, Peter, Sirius, Marlene, and Alice all sitting around the fireplace laughing loudly at something. The group went quiet when James and Lily walked in. Remus greeted them both and invited them to sit down.

"I heard what happened with Jessica and Henry." Remus tried to sympathize with them. "That's awful that they took advantage of you two like that."

The group murmured in agreement, but only Peter spoke up. "I heard James handled it really well."

James shrugged it off, trying not to make Lily feel bad about it, but Lily spoke up first, "What are they saying about me, Peter?"

Peter didn't want to tell her that people had been talking badly, but Lily stared him down until he spoke, "Not much, just that you stood with your mouth open the whole time."

"Peter..." Marlene interrupted, trying to defend Lily. "You can't blame her for being shocked. She hasn't even kissed anybody herself yet!"

Lily blushed and sat back in the couch and covered her face with her hands, this was just getting worse as she went.

Out of shock, James turned to her with a puzzled look "But haven't you been dating that boy for like two months."

Lily slammed her hands on the couch in front of her, shocked that James would spit that out.

Marlene stood, outraged. "You didn't tell me you had a boyfriend!"

Lily couldn't do anything but blush and try to collect herself while everyone around her was moving so quickly. She grunted in frustration and then finally collected herself enough to say, "I _did_ have a boyfriend, but I wrote him today breaking up with him. And _no_ I haven't kissed anybody yet, but Evan and I had only dated for two months, that is a perfectly reasonable amount of time to wait before kissing someone."

Sirius laughed first, joined by everybody except James, who was trying his hardest to sympathize with Lily without showing that he was too excited about her break up. "I can't believe you dated a boy with the same name as you!"

"My name is _Lily, not Evans._" Lily sighed, explaining this to Sirius was not how she imagined her night going.

Remus tried his best to turn the conversation around and the group sat talking for about an hour before Lily dismissed herself to do homework. Shortly after, members left one by one until only James and Sirius were left in the room, chatting aimlessly about Quidditch tryouts and which third years would finally make the team this year.

"Hey, I'm sorry if I made Evans mad at you." Sirius finally said something of some worth for the first time since James had come in to the common room.

"It isn't your fault; I shouldn't have blurted out about the boyfriend."

"Yeah, when did that happen? Marley said Lily hasn't ever had a serious boyfriend."

"She told me about him this morning," James shrugged. "Said she wanted to break up with him."

Sirius laughed at how nonchalant James was acting. "Are you gonna ask her to Hogsmeade now?"

"Well, I was," James sighed and sunk in to his chair. "But she just broke up with him today and isn't that a little early?"

"If you don't, someone else is going to, buddy." Sirius slapped James on the back and tried to cheer him up.

"What if she says no again and it ruins head boy for me though?"

"You've lived through rejection from the girl Merlin knows how many times, James."

"This is totally different." James rolled his eyes, but stood up ready to go. "I have to go study for my Muggles Studies exam, anyway."

"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow, man."

James walked up to his room and opened his door lightly. He lingered in the doorway, wondering if he should ask Lily for help with muggle studies, but he ultimately decided not to push his luck and leave her alone for the night.


	9. Broken Mug

September 20, 1977

Tuesday morning was going to be rough for Lily and she knew that already. Her eyes were puffy and swollen from crying the night before, but she got up, combed through her hair, and brushed her teeth. She started to make her morning tea before she realized she didn't have any other mugs than the one she had broken the night before. She sighed and walked over to her closet to get her head girl uniform out and was reminded by the picture still framed on her wall what she had done to poor Evan. She took the frame down and threw the picture away altogether, mad at herself for thinking she was going to do better at Hogwarts, mad at Marlene for likely ruining her chances with James since she blurted out that Lily hadn't ever kissed anybody, mad at all the kids who were talking about how badly she had handled Jessica and Henry. Tuesday morning was a bad morning already.

James and Lily met outside of their doors, like usual.

"Good morning, Evans!" James grinned. He wasn't as dressed up at the day before and his hair was a mess. He pushed his glasses in to place and Lily smiled back.

"Good morning, Potter."

"No morning tea?"

"I broke my only mug yesterday." Lily sighed and James knew he had hit a touchy subject. He didn't want to ask about her stuffy voice and puffy eyes, which he knew were an aftermath of crying late into the night, so he avoided talking about the previous day at all.

As they walked their normal route, James looked for something to bring up, anything, so he didn't have to walk in silence. "Do you think you could help me study for my Muggles Studies exam after rounds?"

"Yeah, I don't know how I'll help. I'm not even in the class." Lily shrugged.

"Well..." James stumbled over himself. "I just wasn't sure if you would know any of the information."

"I think it may be a running joke between the muggle born students here," Lily laughed. "to allow that class to go completely unchecked. I mean everything they teach is completely incorrect!"

James laughed along, realizing that Lily was at least being cheered up by the notion of Muggle Studies being a worthless class. "Right now, we're reviewing how film works and animated film classics."

"Let me guess, they told you animation was done by drawing each tiny movement and then flipping pages really fast on a note pad." Lily made herself laugh and James chuckled along, not realizing that what he had been taught was incorrect.

"How does it actually work..."

"No, that's actually mostly correct." Lily laughed. "That's why it's funny. You wizards think that is so crazy, but it's almost entirely true. Animators spend their entire lives drawing the same few characters to make films like Snow White and Cinderella for children."

James failed to see what was funny and he didn't recognize either movie she had listed.

"Have you watched any films in class yet?" Lily was obviously in better spirits so James continued despite how uncomfortable he was feeling.

"No, but I think it's interesting to think about." he tried his hardest to relate to her, still unsure of any other talking points.

"Well, you should really watch Pinocchio if you ever have the chance." she nodded "That was my favorite movie growing up."

"Why do they call it a movie? I understand film because they are recorded on film paper, but why movie?"

"Because it's a picture that moves..."

"But all pictures move." James was puzzled by the whole thing and he was scared to patronize her.

"No, all wizard pictures move, which by the way, is very unsettling." Lily and James drifted closer together on their rounds this morning, talking about all the muggle things that James simply didn't comprehend. Lily poked fun at him for believing everything his professors said and James let her because even if he felt dumb thinking about it, at least she was talking to him and not thinking about her broken mug.

James and Lily walked to breakfast together after rounds. When they got to the table, Lily made herself an overdue cup of tea and they chatted while they waited on their friends to come. Sirius came first, plopping down next to James and immediately shoving the biggest muffin he could find in his mouth. Marlene followed shortly after, planting a kiss on Sirius's cheek before greeting anybody at the table. Remus made his way to the table, followed by Alice and Peter not long after.

"How are you doing this morning, Lil" Marlene asked, trying to subtly address the evidence that she was not alright.

"I'm doing better," Lily sipped her tea. "Thanks for asking."

"Has Dumbledore said anything else about Jessica and Henry?" Peter leaned across the table, picking up two pastries.

"No more than they'd be removed as prefects." James answered.

"I expect they'll be mad at us for a while." Lily chimed in.

"I would be mad too if you interrupted my makeout session." Marlene laughed and nudged Sirius.

"Who even makes out in a library?" Lily slammed her tea down.

Everybody was silent at the table. Lily looked around, hoping someone would back her up. "Have you... all... made out in the library?"

Everybody nodded their heads. Sirius pointed at Marlene. Marlene pointed at Sirius.

"Mine was a boy named Bentley fifth year," Alice chirped.

Remus added in "I made out with that girl May who graduated last year."

Peter shrugged, "I haven't kissed anybody yet."

"That doesn't count, Peter." James rolled his eyes and laughed.

"Well, what about you?" Lily asked James and the table erupted in laughter. James was blushing and covering his face with his hands. "What am I missing?"

"James lost his virginity in the library." Sirius forced through laughter. Lily's eyes widened and her jaw dropped.

You- _what" _She didn't know whether to congratulate or scold him, but her natural reaction was to laugh.

James ran his hands through his hair and shrugged with a sheepish grin. "It was a convenient place. I don't know what else to tell you. I was 15, I made mistakes."

Lily was even more shocked by his age than anything, but chose not to comment on it. "So that's why yesterday didn't freak you out?"

"Yeah, I guess it is." James shrugged it off, knowing the last two days weren't helping his chances with Lily whatsoever. He still wanted to ask her to Hogsmeade, but his friends were making it hard to get her to come around to the idea. He had a new plan to woo her though, and it involved her broken mug.


	10. Preparations

September 23, 1977

There was much to be done before the Hogsmeade visit, but Lily couldn't think about any of that until she had finished her potions exam. She walked in nervously even though she and James had stayed up until nearly 2 the night before studying together in the library. She knew every potion and ingredient that could possibly be on the test, but still she was worried. Potions was always a subject that she excelled at, but everybody knew she was only a top student because she worked with Severus. This was the year she would prove that maybe Severus had learned from her, or at least that she was independently good at potions herself.

Her plan was to turn in her test, filled in 100% correctly, then go get ready to train the newest replacement prefects with James for the Hogsmeade visit tomorrow. All of that just depended on the test going well. She sat in her normal seat- which wasn't her normal seat, it was James's, all the way in the back, but it was where she had been all month, so she wasn't going to move now. She took out her notes and started on some last minute review.

James walked in and sat next to her, only smiling to greet her so as not to interrupt her studying. He didn't pull out his notes at all. He was completely confident. He had been up all night with Lily studying, so why should he be worried about some test? Besides, he had bigger things to worry about. The incident earlier this week had left them to train two new prefects tonight, and James still hadn't found a way to ask Lily to Hogsmeade. He just needed to make it through the exam before he could focus on what he wanted to.

Slughorn passed out the exams as soon as every student had sat down. "Remember that as soon as you're done with your exam, you are free to leave the classroom."

James finished his exam first. He didn't question anything he wrote down because it all felt right. He turned it in to the front and patted Lily on the shoulder as he walked out, almost like wishing her good luck.

Lily took another quarter hour after James to finish, and she felt much less confident than he seemed. She turned her exam in and left trying to avoid eye contact with anybody still left in the room.

When she walked out, James was sitting just outside the door on a bench, waiting for her. "Oh, I didn't know you were going to wait on me."

"It wasn't originally my plan, but I figured we have to go train the new prefects together anyway." he smiled, ready to walk with her. "How was your exam?"

"It was good, I don't think I did as well as I wanted, but I'm sure it was fine." Lily tucked her hair behind her ears. "How was yours?"

"I feel good about it." James smiled and ran his hand through his hair. "I don't think I've ever studied that hard for an exam before, so it felt good to actually know the answers the first try."

"Amazing what happens when you study." Lily laughed.

"So what are your plans for Hogsmeade tomorrow?" James inquired as they started walking towards the prefect meeting room, where they would be meeting the two new prefects.

"Are you quizzing me on my role in tomorrow?" Lily laughed. "You know that I'm going to stay at Hogwarts until the very last carriage to make sure everybody gets on one, then I'll ride over on the last carriage. And in the afternoon I'm riding the first carriage and waiting to check in all the prefects until you come back on the last carriage."

"Yeah, I trust that you know your role.." James laughed. "I really meant what are you doing in between those two times."

"Well, I really need a new mug, so I was hoping to go look for one, but other than that I didn't have any plans." Lily smiled, hoping maybe James would invite her to hang out around with him since Marlene was her normal person to hang out with and she only wanted to be around Sirius.

"Oh, so big plans." he laughed. They walked right up to the fifth floor as James was about to ask her out. The two new prefects were standing right outside the door. There was a short Slytherin boy with dark hair and glasses and a tall blonde Hufflepuff girl. They looked excited to be there and waved at Lily and James as they walked up.

Lily walked over, hand outreached and introduced herself. The girl introduced herself as Marissa, a sixth year Hufflepuff and the boy was Julian, he was a seventh year Slytherin. James and Lily escorted them in to the meeting room and Lily briefly discussed with them the rules of being a prefect.

"I know you two didn't get to choose your rounds for this semester, but James and I are currently on two routes, so you can each choose which you'd rather take. There is one from six in the morning to eight in the morning and one from seven at night to nine at night."

"I can do mornings!" Marissa chimed eagerly.

Julian laughed, but didn't speak up.

James chuckled. "Don't worry, we all would choose nights if given the choice."

"If it isn't a problem, I'll do night shifts." Julian spoke up after James.

"Does that mean I'll be walking with you?" Marissa nodded towards James, uneasy.

"Yeah, that is what that would mean.."

"Could I actually also do night rounds? I study best in the morning and I don't want to lose that time." Marissa smiled directly at Lily.

"Uhm... yeah, of course." Lily stumbled, exchanged an uncomfortable glance with James and moved on.

"Now, just remember, if you ever have any questions about your duties or need help, you can always come to either one of us." Lily smiled. She pulled out of her bag two shiny new prefect badges. "These now belong to you, and I hope you treat them kindly."

She handed them their badges and a stack of papers reviewing what they had talked to them about.

"So now, if you have no other questions, that's all we needed to talk to you about." James grinned and the two got up.

"It was so nice meeting you two." Lily shook both of their hands. "We'll see you first thing tomorrow morning!"

After they had left the room and had long enough to get out of ear shot, Lily turned to James grinning ear to ear. "What did you do to that poor girl that she couldn't do rounds with you?"

"Nothing." James insisted.

"Oh, _come one_, there is no way she changed for homework." Lily put her bag on her bag and poked at James's side "Who is she?"

"Okay, okay..." James laughed and gave in. "We went on a few dates when I was a fifth year and she was a fourth year. It wasn't anything crazy, but she definitely liked me more than I liked her, so I cut it off."

Lily's face dropped slightly, "You don't think she still likes you, do you?"

"I don't know.." James trailed as he ran his hands nervously through his hair. "I haven't even talked to her since."

They started to walk back to their rooms together almost quietly, cracking little jokes every now and again. Lily waited for James to ask her to Hogsmeade, but it never came. James never found the right words to ask her or the right moment. When they got to their rooms, Lily lingered around, making little filler conversation while she waited hopefully for James to ask her out.

"Well, early morning tomorrow." Lily trailed. "I should get to bed."

"Yeah, I really should too..." James nodded and let Lily get half way through her door before abruptly blurting out. "Do you want to go out tomorrow?"

Lily turned and gave him a questionable look. James ran both hands through his hair nervously, "I mean, you said you don't have plans, and I don't have plans. I was just hoping maybe you'd want to go get lunch or walk around or something. We can go find you a new mug or whatever you want."

Lily smiled and nodded, "I would really enjoy that."

"O-Okay then." James stuttered, not totally believing what had just happened. His heart was pumping and blood was rushing to his head. "It's a date."

"It's a date." Lily repeated, grinning. "I'll see you then. Goodnight, Potter."

James stood, completely frozen for several minutes after she closed her door. He didn't think, just felt a wave of relief over his body knowing he had just successfully asked Lily Evans on a date. He had to tell Sirius and Remus and Peter. He didn't even think to change out of his head boy robes before sprinting to the Gryffindor commons.

When he got there, sweaty and out of breath, he found Marlene, Sirius, Alice, Remus, and Peter all on the couches talking. There were several other students in the room, but he didn't care. He was pumping with adrenaline. He ran to where they were standing and huffed out.

"You guys..." deep breaths, deep breaths. "will not believe what I just did."

"Did it involve running a marathon?" Marlene snickered.

"I asked Lily Evans out."

The whole group let out cheers of excitement and congratulations. Sirius stood up and slapped him on the back, pulling him in to a bear hug.

It was after everybody had calmed down that Peter finally felt a need to clarify, "Did she say yes though?"

James didn't even respond, just embraced Peter so hard he swept off his feet and swung him in a circle. "YES! Wormtail, she said yes!"

More applause followed, including some random students who had felt a need to congratulate him in the common area.

"So what are you two going to go do?" Marlene finally asked when everything settled.

"I have no clue." James said, still smiling, but starting to come to reality with the facts that he had no idea what he wanted.

"Where are you going?" Remus prodded.

"I have no..clue..."

"Have you got anything planned, Prongs?"

"No, Padfoot, I do not." James nodded, really internalizing that he had to come up with an amazing first date by morning. "It looks like I have a lot of planning to do."


	11. The Date

September 24, 1977

James knocked on Lily's door on Saturday morning, but got no reply. He knocked one more time, but still got no answer, so he decided to head down to breakfast early and alone. He was already all dressed for Hogsmeade in his head boy robes with his hair brushed neatly, which he was determined not to mess up today. When he got down to the dining hall, he searched for Lily, but didn't see her. He sat next to Sirius and Peter and grabbed toast from the center.

"Are you excited for your date, Prongs?" Peter leaned across the table, almost getting jelly in his tie.

"Don't be dense, Wormtail, of course he's excited."

"To be honest," James laughed. "I'm pretty nervous myself."

"I'm sure it'll go well." Peter reassured him to the best of his ability.

"Yeah, and I'll be there the whole time in case you need me." Sirius winked at James.

"What is that to mean?"

Peter chuckled and shook his head, obviously trying to keep a secret.

"Seriously, what does that mean?" James got a little more frantic, worried that Sirius had plans to crash his date in some way.

"Doesn't matter," Sirius brushed it off nonchalantly. "What have the two of you got planned?"

"I figured once we get the third years settled, we could go to The Three Broomsticks for lunch.. then maybe walk around and shop for a little while, she broke her mug this week, so I wanted to get her a new one."

"Are ya going to kiiiiss her?" Peter's voice was shrill and childish.

"Don't be silly, Peter." Sirius waved him off. "Of course he'll kiss her, it's a _date_."

"Actually..." James started sheepishly. "I don't think I am today."

Both boys looked back at him astonished. This was not typical James.

"Well, it just seems like it may be a lot for a first date." he shrugged, then turned his head to the entrance of the grand hall.

Lily walked quickly over to James, not at all how he expected her to be. She was in her pajamas and had her hair thrown in a bun. She wasn't wearing any makeup and she had pushed on a pair of glasses James had never seen before. As she hurriedly walked up to him, his eyes widened.

"Potter, I need you to come with me."

Peter whistled suggestively and gave his best wink. Sirius hit him in the arm, understanding the magnitude of whatever situation would've pulled Lily out in her night clothes.

James stood and followed Lily out the door. He had a million questions, but Lily was walking too fast for him to ask.

When the got out of the grand hall, Lily was obviously beelining for Dumbledore's office, which only served to scare James. "Lily, what's wrong."

Lily stopped and turned around to face him.

"We can't go to Hogsmeade today." she threw her hands through her hair. "I'm sorry, I promise I'll make it up to you."

Stress was radiating from her face. She obviously hadn't slept and was distraught with everything, whatever that was. James didn't get any answers from that.

James laughed and pulled her in for a hug. "If you don't want to go out with me, Evans, you could just say so."

Lily embraced him back and croaked out something James couldn't even hear.

"Hey, speak up." he pulled her back and looked her dead in her bloodshot, teary eyes.

"They're targeting the Muggle born students." she sniffled. James knew it had to be serious for Lily to be crying, so he grabbed her hand and started back for Dumbledore's office. Lily tried to explain as they walked, but her words were lost in how fast they were moving just to get there. James stopped caring about the date and was focused only on getting to Dumbledore.

* * *

When they got there, James turned to Lily and took a couple of deep breaths at the door.

"Whose glasses are those?" he laughed as a last minute bit of comic relief before walking in.

"They're my readers, but when Dumbledore came and got me last night, I didn't have time to take them off." Lily laughed and shrugged. "I also still have my retainer in, so I have had a lisp this whole time and trust me, nothing is more embarrassing than trying to cast patronus's with a lisp."

James laughed and they walked in to Dumbledore's office. James looked around the room to see McGonagall, the Minister of Magic, and several others who he didn't recognize.

"James, I'm not sure what Miss Evans has informed you of, but this is the Order of The Phoenix. They are here to help us with an incident that happened late last night." James's head was spinning. He didn't understand any of what was happening and didn't even know where to begin with questions.

"We will inform you of what we know now, but since you're here to relieve Miss Evans, I think it would be appropriate if you went and changed into robes. There won't be another update for another half hour." Dumbledore turned to Lily to dismiss her. "Be back before then."

Lily nodded and headed out the door. James couldn't comprehend what was happening in the slightest and he couldn't think of any reason he would need to "relieve" Lily.

Dumbledore began to explain. He had been alerted the night before of an unscheduled apparition on school grounds. Dumbledore immediately came to the head commons and knocked on both doors, but James hadn't responded, so they continued without him. After the apparition, the Minister had gotten word of an attempted escape from Azkaban; however unsuccessful it was, it didn't matter because the news was flooding in. Shortly after, Dumbledore had Lily and Slughorn monitoring the halls while staff searched the grounds. On the wall exterior of the head rooms, the words "Mudbloods beware" were written in red paint, no doubt aimed to look like blood. This made James's skin crawl. They cleaned it up, but not before several students saw in- including Lily. Dumbledore explained that they were investigating, but nobody had been found yet. The students were going to go on lockdown for the day, and prefects would be in charge of ensuring nobody left their common areas or dormitories.

Around the time that Dumbledore finished filling James in, Lily walked back in, in full head girl robes with dripping wet hair.

"Any updates yet?" She asked, combing her hair with her hands, wishing she had a towel to dry it with.

"Not yet, Miss Evans." Dumbledore nodded. "I see you got a shower. I hope that refreshed you because this is going to be a long day."

Dumbledore turned away and went to talk to the order, leaving Lily and James on the other side of the room alone.

"So, you weren't just trying to get out of our date, I guess." James laughed and messed his hair up.

Lily smiled at James. She was almost mad that he didn't seem to be taking this seriously, but it was nice to laugh a little.

"I know a spell that can dry your hair for you." he said after a quick moment of silence. "It's _comae sicco._"

James waved his wand around Lily's face and all of the water squeezed out of Lily's hair and directly on to the floor. He blushed, not knowing the spell would leave a puddle on the ground. Lily stared at the puddle on the ground, astonished.

"Well... at least my hair is dry." she nodded. She didn't have time to be mad at James for his foolishness today. At least he had good intentions.

"How are you?" James didn't know what to say so he just came out with the obvious. "After this morning?"

"I'm going to be fine." Lily shook her head, staying stronger than she needed to be. "I just wish other people hadn't seen because now they're going to question me as a head girl."

"That's not true. There is not a single other girl at this school who could do the job you're doing." James rubbed her arm in an effort to comfort her without raising eyes from Dumbledore or the order.

"I'm sure there are plenty of students who believe this school is better run by purebloods."

"Well," James bit his lip looking for the right words to say. "I think I'm living proof that that is not true. I could not do this job without you."

Lily gave a half genuine smile and James realized he wasn't really helping the situation. They turned to Dumbledore, who was still addressing the order out of earshot. There was an awful amount of tension in the room and Lily and James didn't know how exactly they could help anyway; they were just teenagers.

* * *

After several long minutes of waiting, a light blue airy figure of a dog appeared in the center of the room. It opened it's mouth and a deep voice bellowed out.

"Keep the school on lockdown. There's been an attack." Just as quickly as the patronus had appeared, it wisped away into thin air. Lily gasped along with several others in the room. James placed a hand on her shoulder as a small sign of comfort.

Dumbledore turned towards Lily and James and nodded, "Get everyone into their common rooms. Have prefects monitor their respective houses. I will send for you two if needed."

Lily nodded, knowing she was going to do what she had to, but still scared. James took the first steps towards the door, confident and fearless, at least that was the image he wanted to put forth. He didn't want Lily to think he was as shook up about the incident as he was, but there was little he could do to hide it other than not talk of it.

* * *

They gathered the prefects in the great hall, all other students had been sent back to their common rooms for the time being. Lily stood at the front, explaining that there had been attacks on Muggleborns and Pureblood families who had adopted or married in Muggles all day and there had been a strange apparition the night before. She told them there was little to worry about and Dumbledore was just taking extra precautions. Hogwarts was the safest place in the world for them to be.

There were whispers of Lily being unfit for head girl already. Several students accused her for being the reason that Death Eaters were targeting Hogwarts now. Some suggested she be removed. Lily didn't respond to any of the rumors. In fact, she ignored them, continuing about her duties as head girl. James hushed the rumors as he heard them, unlike Lily, not tolerating bad talk of the leaders during a time of trouble. Lily held her head high as she dismissed the prefects to their individual common rooms, but after they left she began to allow herself to feel again. She was scared and tired and not sure how she was going to make it through this.

Lily and James walked to their common room, not speaking of what was happening at all. Neither of them had words to say, there was no need for filler conversation now, and they were sure they'd have plenty to talk about in the common room since they were the only ones who truly knew the situation.

* * *

They walked in and the loud room went dead silent. Students stared at them as they walked towards their friends in the far corner. Whispers started soon after, nobody wanting to say what they were all thinking about Lily's blood status.

Marlene hugged Lily first, "I'm sorry you're going through this, Lil..."

Sirius placed a hand on her shoulder, "None of us support what was written, you know."

"Yeah, we'll be in your corner no matter what happens." Alice chimed in, grabbing Lily's hand.

Remus nodded along as his friends shared their condolences.

Peter twiddled his thumbs, unsure of what he could say to make Lily feel better.

James threw an arm over her shoulder and pulled her in.

Lily couldn't bring herself to say much more than thanks without crying, so she didn't. It was important that she didn't appear weak to the students in the common rooms. She leaned her head on to James's shoulder and sighed.

"Can you tell us the full story, Lily?" Peter asked quietly. "I heard about the writing."

"I am not at liberty to tell you that, Peter." Lily shook her head.

"We don't know any more than you do anyway." James added, hoping to ease the curiosity. He could already see that other students were leaning in to listen.

Lily and James weren't sure what Dumbledore's signal could be, but they hoped it would come soon because Gryffindors were making their way closer to the group to listen to them stand in silence.

"James, how were quidditch tryouts?" Alice tried to keep the conversation down to something nobody would want to listen in on.

"We have some good young talent coming. There was a fourth year keeper I think may be a starter for us this year."

Nobody had much more to say, and the conversation died off quickly. A first year, teary eyed, walked up to the group.

"Can I talk to you?" She croaked out, turned towards James and Lily. "Alone, maybe. It's really important."

Lily nodded, "Of course, why don't you come with us to a more private place?"

James looked at Lily, confused, but Lily just nodded and said "We can go to the head commons and talk."

Lily and James took the young girl through the common room entrance and walked her down the halls to the head commons, which were empty. Lily and James each sat down on the larger couch and the young girl sat on the loveseat adjacent to them.

"Tell us what's wrong, Emily." Lily only remembered the girl's name from the first night because she was also a muggleborn, and Lily saw a lot of herself in the girl.

"I just want to know that I won't get in trouble first." she bit her lip, nervously.

"We can't promise amnesty, but we can promise to back you up to Dumbledore, whatever it is." James offered, hoping that the girl would feel comfortable enough to talk to him too. She was obviously only looking at Lily, as if she didn't quite trust James.

"I was out really late last night." she started, twiddling her hands. "Past curfew late, but I think I saw who wrote on the walls."

"Who did you see?" Lily leaned forward.

"It was a sixth or seventh year boy with long black hair."

"Did you see what house he was in?" James already knew exactly who to blame.

"He wasn't wearing robes, so I couldn't see."

"Did you get a good look at his face?" Lily questioned, already sure of who James was expecting, but not wanting to jump to conclusions.

"He had a big nose and was kinda pale, but I don't know his name."

"Were there any other details about the boy you could give us?" James leaned forward, interested.

"I didn't get that good of a look..." she trailed off. "But I saw him call my friend a Mudblood once."

"Emily, you know that that word is just something he uses to get under your skin." Lily put her head in her hands. "He's too insecure knowing there are witches and wizards out there who were not exposed to magic at an early age that are undeniably better than he is, so he gives them some nasty name and tries to belittle them based on no fault of their own."

"Well, yeah... I know that but he wrote the things on the wall too, and I think he might try to hurt someone next."

"I promise you, Dumbledore will not let that happen." James stepped in hopefully to keep Lily from getting too heated.

"I know it's scary to think about people wanting to hurt you for your family," Lily softened her tone. "But me and you and all the other muggleborns— who deserve to be here— are going to be okay. We'll stand up for each other and if anybody threatens you, you just let me know."

Emily nodded and hugged Lily. Lily embraced the small girl for a long time before sending her back to the common room. She felt so bad for her, knowing exactly what she was going through.

Once Emily left, James and Lily began discussing who the culprit was and if they should tell Dumbledore yet.

"Of course it was Severus!" James couldn't believe that Lily was even attempting to defend him right now.

"We don't know that for sure until we have his side of the story..." Lily stammered. "There are plenty of older boys with pale skin, black hair, and big noses."

"Name one other!"

"Sirius Black!"

"Sirius does not have a big nose; you take that back."

"James," she sighed in exasperation. "I didn't mean that. I know Sirius would never target us like that.. I just don't want to take this to Dumbledore if we're wrong. I'll be removed for bias against students for sure."

"If you really don't feel comfortable telling Dumbledore then I'll take Emily to him myself but he has to know."

"James, please just listen to me for one second."

"I promise, Lils, I'm trying, but you're not making any sense right now and I don't want you to be defending him on the basis that he was at one point your friend." James placed a firm hand on Lily's face but softened it. "He's done some awful things to witches like you, and you deserve to not be stuck questioning a decision just because it affects some dick like him."

"You mean Mudbloods." Lily sunk in to James's hand on her face. "He's dons some awful things to Mudbloods."

"That word is bullshit, and you know it." James took his hand off her face and grabbed her hand strongly. "You said it yourself. He only uses that as a way to make himself feel better for his inadequate magic skills."

"I just said that to make Emily feel better.."

"Well, it's time you start believing yourself, Evans." James got off the couch and pulled Lily after him. "We're going to talk to Dumbledore."

* * *

Lily and James sat down at the dinner table in the great hall, exhausted from their day. Dumbledore walked to the front to make his final speech of the day. It was time for him to announce what measures were being taken to protect all muggle born students, and the entire school was waiting.

"Students," Dumbledore raised his hands to quiet the whispers. "As many of you know, today has been a long day. There was an intentional threat to many of our beloved friends here, and that did not go unnoticed. We appreciate your cooperation with our prefects and head girl and boy today. They made positive reports on every house, and for that I thank you. I had my staff as well as the Ministry's staff look over every inch of campus, and I am glad to announce that no one out of place was found. We have found the student responsible for the threats and are treating them accordingly. For now, Hogwarts is the safest place for all of our students. I know many have wondered if staying is the right thing to do and I assure you, nowhere is safer for you than here. In order to make up, however, for today's mishap and the loss of our first Hogsmeade visit, I will be granting an extra Hogsmeade visit next weekend, organized by our wonderful prefects and heads. Any further concerns may be brought to myself or Professor McGongall."

Dumbledore sat and Lily couldn't help but feel underwhelmed by his speech. He didn't say he was going to make campus safer for muggle borns or have extra security or any of the measures she wanted to take.

"Not hungry, Evans?" Peter pointed at a still full plate in front of Lily.

"I guess not, Peter." She laughed along. "It's been a long day, I think I just need to sleep now."

They all stayed for the entirety of dinner despite barely talking the whole time. James and Sirius finished their plates, but didn't joke like normal. Remus and Lily barely picked over their food, both knowing the consequences of the day's events. Peter finished his plate and got seconds and finished those too. He was a stress eater.

"Maybe we should go back to the commons; it'll be more comfortable anyway." Marlene suggested.

"I would but I think I'm going to go to bed now." Lily smiled. "Thanks, Marlene."

Lily stood up and waved goodnight to everybody before heading out. James waited a few brief moments before also excusing himself to go to bed. He followed Lily out of the great hall, calling towards her until he realized she wasn't going towards their rooms at all.

James followed her, puzzled as to where she was going. He followed at a distance but the further he followed her, the less of an excuse he'd have for being so close behind her.

She trotted all the way up to the seventh floor and James watched her from behind the column. She started pacing back and forth in the hallway. James was confused until a small white door appeared right in front of her on the wall. To say he was confused until that point was misleading— no confusion was alleviated when he saw the door appear.

Lily looked both ways to make sure nobody was near her before she walked in and the door disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared.

James stepped out from behind the column and called for Lily. He ran to where the door had been and checked the entirety of the wall for hidden door knobs.

"Alohamora" he tried weakly, waving his wand anywhere there could be a lock. He didn't understand anything that had just happened and Lily had disappeared without a trace.

What had she done right before the door disappeared? She paced three times and didn't cast a spell or even wave her wand. How could she have summoned a door without any spells? James paced three times, wishing he could figure it out, and suddenly a door appeared.

"What the f..." James mumbled, but approached the small white door cautiously. He knocked lightly on the door, unsure of how it even worked.

Lily slowly cracked the door and peeked her head out. She had never experienced someone finding her in the room before.

"Oh my Merlin..." she jumped. "Potter... how did you... what are you doing here?"

"Me? What are you doing here? What is here?" He peered in to see a small lavender room with a white iron double bed and frames hung around the room. There was a small television on a dresser in front of the bed playing some kind of moving portrait despite none of the other pictures moving. Lily had also changed. She was wearing pink and white striped matching pajama shorts and a tank top with her hair up in a pony tail.

"Come in... before you attract people." Lily huffed, pulling James in by the wrist. She slammed the door behind him and James stood in silence, obviously confused by the room. "Let me explain..."

"Yeah..." James mumbled. "I'm going to need you to explain..." he turned, taking in everything he could.

"So when Severus called me a Mudblood fifth year, I was really upset and I was actually on my way to ask Dumbledore to send me home." She took a brief pause and James put a hand on her shoulder. "Well I was looking for Dumbledore and I walked right past this weird white door. It looked just like mine at home, so I walked in, thinking it was out of place. When I walked in, it was an exact replica of my room at home. That's where you're at now."

"How is it though..?" James didn't get any satisfaction from her answer. "Where did it come from?"

"I didn't care at first, but I did some research and found that this is actually the Room of Requirements. Hogwarts legend has it that one of the founders actually left it here for students to come to for anything they need. It summons anything you require but it only reveals itself to students in need."

James nodded, piecing it together. "So what do you do in here?"

"I usually just lay in my bed and watch movies until I feel less homesick. I try not to use it often, but when I get hatred for being born to Muggles, it's hard not to come here."

James pulled Lily in to a hug and kissed the top of her head. "I'm sorry you have to deal with this." He whispered into her hair.

Lily pulled away after a long moment.

"I'm going to let you be; if you need anything let me know." James nodded and headed towards the door.

"Actually.." Lily grabbed his hand gently. "Why don't you stay? You never got to watch some really good films in Muggle Studies."

"I'm not really dressed for movies." James ran his hand through his hair. "Could I go change first?"

"Just think about it." Lily perked up. "The room will give you clothes!"

James smiles nervously, but didn't trust it. Lily watched as he pathetically imitated thinking and the room did nothing in return.

"No, watch." Lily closed her eyes for only a moment and held her hands out, where magically appeared sweatpants and a tshirt for James.

"Oh..." James laughed. "That easy?" He took the clothes from Lily.

"It takes practice." She laughed. "There's a bathroom through that door you can change in."

James walked over and changed. He checked himself in the mirror nervously, it seemed like he was in fact going to get his date with Evans.. just not how he planned it. He ran his hands through his hair in the mirror, attempting to brush it to no avail. He took a few last breaths and looks in the mirror before walking back out.

Lily was siting the bed cross legged, pushing a button on a small black device James didn't recognize. The television moved in a way he hadn't seen it do before.

"Oh! I'm just rewinding it. You haven't seen the beginning of Pinocchio and you won't understand it without the beginning." Lily laughed, seeing the confusion in James's face. She patted the bed next to her, inviting James to sit with her.

James moved in and sat on the edge of the bed awkwardly. Lily smiled at him, inviting him further in, but James didn't want to intrude. Lily was up underneath the comforter and still fiddling with the short black wand that controlled the television.

"James, you can get under the covers with me." She laughed. "Unless you've changed your mind and _you_ no longer want to date me."

"Now, Evans, you know that isn't true." He got next to her and threw his arm around her. She laid her head on his shoulder then tilted her head up to look at him. He smiled momentarily before stuttering again. "D-did you just call me James?"

"Yeah..." she chuckled nervously. "I think I did."

"I think that's the first time you've ever done that." He rubbed her cheek with his thumb. "I was beginning to think you didn't know my name."

The television made a clicking noise and stopped rewinding. Lily settles herself, cuddled up to James underneath his arm. James wrapped his other arm around her and rested his head a top of hers.

James was captured by Pinocchio. He watched attentively to the end, and even teared up—though he'd never admit it— when Pinocchio became a real boy. He didn't understand muggle film, but this was better than anything he had ever seen in the wizard world. He was mesmerized by the moving characters even if they didn't interact with him like normal pictures. Lily, on the other hand, fell asleep not even ten minutes in to the movie. James didn't bother her since she hadn't gotten any sleep the night before. He watched the movie in peace, only briefly interrupted when Lily would twitch or move in her sleep. James tried to quietly move her so he could change movies and was successful in getting her down on the bed. He failed, however, at understanding the television enough to change the film. He stared at it, confused. He tried pushing buttons and jumped when a large rectangle came out of the front.

Lily sat up drowsily and laughed, having woken up to James fiddling hopelessly with the television. James turned around sheepishly.

"I was just trying to change the... uh... the movie." He pointed at the television.

"I see that." She laughed and got out of bed. She pushed her hair behind her ears messily and walked over to pick a movie. "What did you want to watch next?"

James ran his hands through his hair. "I actually don't know any movies, so I was just going to pick whatever looked good."

"Well, I haven't gotten any new movies since I was ten so most of them are childish movies anyway.." Lily got a little embarrassed, flipping through the pile of old kid movies. "Maybe we should just watch something another time."

"No, no. I want to see your favorite movies" James took the stack from her. "What about this one? Cinderella? What's that about?"

"It's a princess film." Lily laughed. "I don't think you'd like it."

"Well... what about this one?" James placed Cinderella on the dresser and held up another. "Peter Pan?"

"Actually... that may be something you'd like." Lily laughed and took the tape from him. She pushed it in to the VCR. She crawled back in the bed, followed by James.

They watched movies until the sun came up. They cuddled and laughed and James absolutely loved every film she put in front of him. He grew more appreciative of her muggle life as he watched with her. This wasn't how he had planned their first date would go, but it was infinitely better. He had loved every moment of it and he couldn't wait to tell Sirius and Remus and Peter all about it. As they walked back to their rooms after an entire night of watching movies together, James finally started to feel just how tired he really was. He yawned the whole way there, glad he had no duties on a Sunday because we was going to need to take the day to recover before he could even think about talking to his friends. He wouldn't have traded that feeling though, not for anything in the world.


	12. Moony

September 28, 1977

* * *

Lily got up at her normal time and walked out to meet James for rounds. James was just a few minutes late, yawning, and with scratches across his face. Lily's eyes widened when he walked out.

"Go back to bed." She said without missing a beat.

"Lils, you can't do rounds alone." He pushed his glasses back up on his nose. "I'm up and ready to go. I just didn't sleep well last night."

"No, no." She said, rubbing his scratches with her thumb. "This isn't a bad nights sleep, Potter."

"Lily," he grabbed her wrist and pulled it down gently, cupping her hand in his. "I promise I'm okay." He kissed her hand and smiled. "I appreciate the concern."

Lily was not convinced that he was fine. He had one deep scratch on his left cheek and smaller scratches across his arms, hands, and neck area. There was no way she was going to let this go without an explanation. 

"Fine..." Lily sighed. "But you have to tell me what happened."

"Not today, Evans." He laughed, running his hands through his hair. He did appreciate her concern, but he couldn't explain to her that Remus was actually a werewolf and that he was actually an animagus and so were Peter and Sirius in one set of rounds, nor could he tell her while they walked about the entire castle. He never would know who was listening. 

"When are you going to tell me then?" Lily pestered as they walked.

"Probably never honestly." James teased her.

"That's not fair.." they walked along all their normal paths, arguing along the way. "You can't just walk up one day beat up and expect me not to worry."

"It isn't bad at all." James laughed everything off, trying to play cool. "They're just minor scratches."

"You can't say these are minor scratches, James. You could need stitches."

"I'll be okay!" He protested. "I'll get Madame Pomfrey to look at them."

"Good, then let's go do that now." She huffed, stopping in her tracks. "Merlin knows nothing is happening on our rounds anyway."

"No..." James stumbled, knowing that Remus was already in the hospital wing and would be a giveaway at what was happening. "We have to do our rounds first."

"James, what is your hesitation?" Lily stomped frustrated. Normally, he was all for skipping rounds since nothing ever seemed to happen in the mornings.

"Why does it even matter!" He raised his voice; he didn't know how to get out of the conversation but he couldn't go to the hospital wing. 

"Because, dumbass, we're dating and I care about you!" She shouted back.

James stepped back, shocked. "We're dating?"

"Yes, you dense toerag." Lily stood firm in her anger.

James smiled and opened his arms for a hug.

Lily shook her head and crossed her arms as she held back tears. Why wouldn't James just tell her what was happening? What was he hiding from her and why?

James pulled her in tightly. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. "I'm sorry I can't tell you right now."

They ended their rounds early this time so Lily could clean up James's face before classes. She used her small knowledge of health spells to treat all the smaller cuts on his arms and reduce the size of what was on his face. Lily was still mad the whole time, but she couldn't have her head boy looking a mess all day. James was just happy that even if Lily was mad, he knew where he stood with her now. He let her clean him up in silence, not arguing any more about telling her or getting help, just happy to have heard her say outloud how she felt. 

* * *

Remus hated skipping classes, but Madame Pomfrey insisted this was the worst full moon she had seen him after in his entire time at Hogwarts. Remus understood her point of view but didn't want to give in anyway. He was exhausted and could barely keep his eyes open. He was dehydrated and beaten up, bruised across his entire body. 

He insisted he was fine, but she continued to talk to him like he was in for a long stay. She asked about his friends, but Remus just had to hope they had the good sense to come in if they needed it. He could never remember the full moon, but this was even worse. He couldn't remember the hours leading up to it. He didn't know if they had transformed in time, if they had made it inside, or if they even went with him the night before.

He had taken a potion Lily had brewed for him, but it hadn't worked as promised. He didn't blame her, and there was no way he could tell her it didn't work, which is why he had to make it to classes. He couldn't let her know anything bad had happened, or she'd blame herself for forever. Remus just had to get better enough to see her today. 

* * *

Sirius rolled out of bed and threw his pillow at Peter. "Get up, Wormtail." He mumbled. He felt like he'd been hit by a bus.

Peter groaned and rolled out of bed. "Do we have to go to class today?" He moaned.

Sirius hesitated, "you're right." He threw himself right back in bed, where he remained for the rest of his day.

Peter only slept about an hour longer before getting up to shower. He looked in the mirror at himself and wondered if maybe he should go get help with the cuts on his shoulders and chest. They were long, but they weren't too deep. The whomping willow had just gotten him sooner than he could transform.

He wanted to go to Madame Pomfrey just to ask, but he also knew that if he went, she would ask questions that might get all of them in trouble and he didn't want that.

He walked to the bathrooms where he stood in the shower, letting hot water run down his body until he physically couldn't stand anymore. The water stung over his scratches so he didn't use soap, just hoped that the water would get all the sweat and blood off of him. He ran his hands through his hair, hoping to get some of the tangled out, but couldn't. He just decided he would ask Remus to cut out the knots later. It was time for a haircut anyway.

He dried himself off and changed in to his robes. He figured he would at least go to Potions class, the last class in his day, since today was a brewing day. He walked back to the dormitories one last time to check if Sirius had gotten up yet, but Sirius was still in bed, not at all moved from where Peter had left him.

* * *

Peter walked in to Potions and sat in his usual spot up front. Remus never came, which Peter expected since the night before had been extremely rough for him. The full moon had just creeped up on the group and none of them could be blamed for what had happened.

James and Lily walked in together, laughing and talking. They sat across from Marlene in their normal table and Marlene quickly joined their conversation. Peter watched, unsure or whether he would be welcomed to sit with Marlene even though he knew Sirius wasn't coming and they'd both need partners for the day. He wasn't entirely sure if she liked him or just dealt with him since he was friends with her boyfriend, and he didn't want to intrude. 

He waited until the last moment to get up and sheepishly walk back to her table.

"Could I sit with you today?" He asked quietly.

"Of course, Peter!" Marlene cleared the seat next to her. "Looks like Sirius slept in today anyway."

Peter sat down with his things as Slughorn walked in.

Lily leaned across her table and whispered worriedly at Peter. "What happened to your face?"

Before he could respond, Slughorn started to explain the lesson for the day and Lily turned back to her seat to take notes. Peter could see that James had no cuts on his face or arms anymore so he assumed Lily must've helped him. Maybe James had told her after all. It wasn't like him to tell just anybody, but Lily was his girlfriend and he really did like her a lot so maybe he felt like she could help. If she had helped James though, maybe she could help him and at least get rid of some of the scratches that stung when he moved. 

* * *

Potions class was boring as usual, Lily and James made a near perfect potion and Peter and Marlene made a passing one. As the group was cleaning up their spaces, Lily walked over to Peter's bench.

"Are you okay, Peter?" She asked, referencing the cuts on his face and shoulder. His were much worse than James had been.

"Yeah, I just fell last night." He laughed nervously. "You know how clumsy I am."

"Well, when we go back to the commons, if you'd like, I can try to dress them. I'm not sure I can do that much magic healing, but I do know how to wrap wounds." She offered, sure he would decline her muggle style of help.

Peter grinned. He was glad Lily was warming up to him. He always had felt like she didn't like him. "I'd love that!" He beamed at her.

Lily nodded, surprised herself. She went back to her bench and cleaned up her own workspace. James tried to make more jokes with Lily, but she didn't seem entirely interested anymore.

The group walked back to the commons together, Marlene making light fun at Peter for his "tumble" the night before that ended him with some pretty serious injuries. They walked in to the common room, where a large group of students sat in their normal space around the fireplace. Lily looked around for a different space to clean up Peter's cuts, but the Gryffindor common room was only so large.

"Maybe we should just go to the head commons?" James suggested.

Lily didn't love the idea since the head commons were bleak. She had been meaning to place around some pillows and blankets to make it cozier, but had been busier than expected as Head girl. "That sounds like a great idea." She forced a smile.

They walked in to the head commons, where Peter and Marlene took a moment to look at in awe.

"How come you've never brought me here before, Lil?" Marlene laughed. "This is incredible."

"It's not that I haven't wanted to. It's just that I haven't had a chance really to decorate or doing anything with it." She stumbled around her words. "It's kind of bleak and boring in here without some throw blankets and pillows and maybe some pictures."

"It's amazing." Peter gasped. "The paintings in here are way cooler than the ones in our common room."

Lily laughed and went in to her room to grab her wraps. She came back with a large bag of bandages and creams.

"So let me see what all happened on your... fall." She started.

Peter unbuttoned his shirt to show her his shoulder and chest cuts. Lily gasped in horror.

"Peter, you have to go to Madame Pomfrey." Marlene's has dropped.

"That's going to get infected!" Lily gasped, looking at the cuts.

James was even a little disgusted at how deep and gory the scratches were. He cringed back as Peter moved, oozing blood from all his open wounds.

"Peter, I think it may be a good time to go to the hospital wing..." James nodded in agreement.

Marlene grabbed Peter's wrist hastily. "Come on, I'm walking you to the hospital wing right now." She tugged him out of the common room as fast as she could.

"Come back and update us!" Lily hollered out the door after they left. As their painting closed behind her, she turned and gave James the dirtiest glare she could. "What.. the hell... were you thinking?"

"Okay, Lils." he threw his hands up. "I genuinely didn't know his injuries were that bad. I would have never let him go to class like that!" 

"What were you two doing? Peter looks two steps away from death!" Lily took slow, angry steps towards James, waving her arms in the air for emphasis. 

"It isn't like I don't want to tell you, Evans." he held his arms out and gently placed his hands on her biceps. "I just can't."

"The two of you could have died and you think you have a right to hide from me how it happened?" she was screaming at this point, more furious at James than she had ever been. 

"Lily, please." he kept his voice low, and his grip on her soft. He didn't want to argue over this because if she just knew, he knew she wouldn't be so angry. 

Lily glared at him, breathing heavily. She didn't even have words to say to him any more. She just wanted to scream and cry and know what was going on. She stormed out of the commons, stomping her way all the way to the hospital wing. 

James followed her, calling her name every few minutes. He knew that Remus had visited Madame Pomfrey this morning, and he wanted to keep her as far from it as possible. 

* * *

Lily stormed in to the open hospital wing doors and immediately stomped over to where Peter and Marlene were sitting in the first bed. Peter had his shirt off and Madame Pomfrey was applying a salve to his shoulders. Marlene was sitting in the chair next to the bed, consoling Peter and cracking jokes to keep his mind off of his obviously very painful quick recoveries. Lily walked up, calming herself enough to stand behind Marlene and smile at Peter. 

James ran in, out of breath, just a minute after her. He scoped out the room and walked right up behind Lily. 

"How are you feeling, Peter?" Lily grinned, as Madame Pomfrey put the last of the salve in his deepest cuts. 

"A little better." he smiled back. "Thank you all for coming, you really didn't have to."

"Nonsense." James put his hand on Lily's shoulder. "We were worried about you."

Lily tensed her shoulder, not wanting to let Peter know they were fighting, but still angry with James. She smiled and nodded in agreement. 

Madame Pomfrey watched as the deepest of Peter's wounds healed up almost instantaneously. She cleaned the smaller cuts, and used a spell to heal them, but left the scratches. "Now, Peter. Next time you decide to fall in the middle of the night, be sure to come to me first." she said firmly, obviously not buying his story. 

"Yes ma'am, I will." Peter blushed, putting his clothes back on. 

Lily had softened up a bit, knowing that at least Peter was safe and healed up now. James had moved to put his entire arm around her while Pomfrey worked. As Peter got ready to leave, Marlene and James also gathered themselves to leave. Lily, on the other hand, was staring back in to the back of the room. 

"Can I catch up to you guys in a minute?" she turned as they started heading towards the door. 

"Sure, Lily." Peter smiled. 

"I'll see you at dinner later." She nodded and walked straight back. Peter and Marlene rounded the corner and walked towards their dorms, but James stayed in the doorway to see exactly what Lily was up to. 

She walked all the way to the back and sat down next to the last bed, where the patient was turned towards the wall. 

"It didn't work last night, did it?" Lily choked out, behind tears. 

Remus rolled over and sat up to meet her eyes. "It didn't work as planned, no." 

"We'll fix it for next time." She nodded, wiping tears from her face. By this time, James had slowly made his way behind her and placed his hand on her shoulder. 

"Lily, it may not be worth it." Remus started before Lily burst in to tears. 

"No, I swear I can do it. I promise I'll learn." she choked out. 

"You've helped so much more than you know." Remus tried to console her, reaching out and placing a hand on her knee. "It isn't your fault this keeps happening."

"I just don't understand how Severus could do it, but I can't." James finally started to understand Lily's frustration at the day. She knew the whole time and was upset because she blamed herself. He didn't realize she was so deep in to everything already. He moved so both hands were on her shoulders, but stayed silent.

"We'll work on it together next month." Remus offered. "All three of us can try it this time." 

Lily continued crying in to her hands and James and Remus exchanged glances. James walked around and sat just far enough away from Remus that he could pull Lily in to the middle of them. He gently tugged at her wrist and motioned her in the middle. She sat and the boys both placed gentle hands on her knees, still silently supporting her. James wrapped an arm around her and leaned in towards her.

They all sat in silence for a long time while Lily collected herself. Remus broke the silence. 

"Thank you for coming to see me." he laughed. "Even if you didn't mean to."

Lily threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. He hugged her back gingerly. "I'm sorry it didn't work this time." 

"Thank you for trying anyway." He finished and pulled back from their hug. "You two should go get in bed. It's getting late and I'm sure you've already missed dinner." 

Lily and James agreed and left Remus in the hospital wing for the night, walking silently to their rooms. 

* * *

Author's note: Hey yall! I'm gonna keep this real short. Sorry for taking so long to pump this chapter out! Hopefully I will post a lot that I've been working on tonight! :) thank you all for the continued support! Be sure to message me if you want to see anything included! I love hearing from yall. 


	13. The First Hogsmeade Visit

October 1, 1977

* * *

The first Hogsmeade attempted trip was not successful because the whole school was on lockdown for the entire day, but James was still happy with what he considered to be his first date with Lily. He had not, however, asked her to Hogsmeade for the trip that was actually happening, so his entire day was dependent upon if Lily had also just assumed that they would go together. He didn't want to ask now because then he would seem irresponsible for not planning, but he feared he seemed cocky for assuming she'd want to go on another date with him anyway. Neither were good options for him, but he never found the right time for it. They were always talking about head matters and Lily didn't seem interested in fun conversation when that happened. Whichever it was, James would find out soon.

He and Lily stood in front of the prefects waiting for the last few to pile in since it was extremely early.

"Good morning everyone!" Lily greeted them warmly. "I hope you all slept well because today is going to be a long day! I'm sure after last week's fiasco, we're all still a little on edge, but I hope this trip is exactly what we all need to feel better."

"Remember your stations from last week. There will be exactly two prefects on each carriage." James started after her, they had rehearsed this a hundred times because Lily insisted it be perfect in order to prove to everybody that she was in fact the best girl to be the Head Girl despite the recent attack on Muggleborns. "I will go with the first carriage and check students and prefects off as you arrive at Hogsmeade. Lily will ride the last carriage to make sure everybody arrives safely, and when we are all accounted for, you will be on your own until 6, when you will be asked to repeat the process coming back."

"Are there any questions?" Lily smiled, glad that all the prefects had shown up on time and glad that rumors of her being unfit were dying down. "Does everybody remember their carriage assignments?"

Silence followed. Nobody spoke or raised their hands to question and third years were starting to line up behind the crowd of prefects.

"Alright then!" Lily concluded her speech as cheerily as she could. "If you need anything throughout the day, feel free to search out myself or James!"

_or_ James... That wasn't exactly what James had been hoping for. Maybe that meant she didn't want to hang around with him today. Or maybe it was just her way of keeping their relationship out of the public eye. He didn't know, but he wasn't going to ask now. He would just embarrass himself in front of all the prefects and he had to wait on her at the carriage drop off any way, so maybe she'd get there and ask him to walk around with her or go get brunch or any number of acceptable date-esque activities.

He stood beside Lily, cracking jokes, as students lined up. They laughed and talked, neither one mentioning plans for what both hoped would become a second date.

* * *

As all the students lined up, James took the very first carriage over. Lily was much quieter after he left, speaking only to direct students where they needed to be. She smiled at everyone, hoping that nobody would take her silence as cold. She was extremely concerned about her image after the previous week though, and she needed to make sure everybody still respected -and liked- her.

Lily also feared that she had spent so much of the last week concerned about her image that James would be mad at her. He hadn't asked her out again this week, which maybe meant he didn't want to go out. She did think though, he seemed happy when she said they were dating. She hadn't thought of that as a big step because they basically spent all their time together: they had almost all the same classes, they studied together, they did rounds every morning, and they had spent last Saturday night watching movies and cuddling. Still, James hadn't said it himself and maybe he didn't feel that way anymore- why else would he not have just asked her on another date? It wasn't like he hadn't had plenty of opportunities, Lily practically forced him to practice his Hogsmeade script every day, which means he thought about it every single day and _still_ didn't ask her out. Lily began to wonder if maybe James didn't like her anymore... Maybe as he got to know her he realized he didn't like her. Maybe she should have kissed him last Saturday. She had wondered if he was bored on that sorry excuse of a date. He had just laid and watched muggle children movies with her and she barely cuddled up to him. Surely being as _popular_ with the girls as he was, that must've been a disappointment to not get anywhere with a girl all night.

Thoughts swirled around in her head so quickly she started to turn pale with anxiety. She didn't even know how to fix this now, but James was the first guy she'd really liked in a long time. Sure, Evan was nice, but he wasn't everything Lily wanted and she had to hide such a big part of her life from him it didn't even feel like he knew her. James was different though. He took time to listen to her and get comfortable with her and he hadn't been pushy about anything and he was smart and talented and he really seemed to care about her. Lily decided she had to at least _ask_ James out after she got off her carriage, just to know if he was still interested in her.

The last carriage loaded, and Lily checked every person off her list. It looked as if this trip was going to go well. Everything had gone smoothly, and they were even ahead of schedule. The day started to look up for Lily, even if she didn't have solid plans yet. She climbed in herself and they pulled off to Hogsmeade like usual. All of the seventh years rode over last, so Lily was more relaxed around them than she had been all morning.

"What are your big plans today, Lil?" Sirius leaned over, insinuating that she and James had another big day planned out.

"I actually don't currently have any.." she laughed nervously, sure he knew that James didn't like her anymore.

"Oh, well Remus and I are probably going to walk around and maybe get lunch if you wanted to come with us." he shrugged.

"Well, I was hoping maybe that James would want to go out today since last week got cancelled, but I really appreciate the offer." Lily watched Sirius's face, hoping he would give away if James had diverged any information to him. "Unless of course, he doesn't want to do anything."

Sirius and Remus both laughed. "As if he doesn't want to go out with you, Evans."

"Well, he hasn't said anything all week, so I don't know..." she shrugged. "Maybe he lost interest."

"Why on earth would you believe that?" Remus laughed.

"The boy practically never shuts up about you." Sirius interjected. "Lily said hey to me today, but in a cute way. Lily's hair was up today and it looked really pretty. Lily called me a bloke and then laughed instead of rolling her eyes like always." He mocked.

Lily turned bright red. Of course, she was just being paranoid. She tried to laugh it off, but couldn't help feeling embarrassed for not realizing.

"He probably was just too nervous to ask you." Remus offered, sympathizing as much as possible. "He was so nervous last time, I'm pretty sure I didn't see him eat for two days."

Lily laughed, thankful that Remus at least didn't think she was stupid for how she felt. "I guess we'll see when we get there."

Remus and Sirius continued on, mocking James for his apparent obsession with Lily. Lily sat quiet for the rest of the ride, smiling and laughing as she found things funny, but mostly just sat uncomfortable watching out the carriage, trying not to think about if James really still did like her or not.

* * *

When they arrived, James was standing, eagerly holding the clipboard that Lily forced in to his hands earlier this week, checking students off as they got off their carriages. Prefects lined up, ready to be dismissed to have their own days.

Lily exited the carriage last and James dramatically checked her name off the list.

"Prefects, remember if you have any issues, report them directly to myself or Lily today!" he shouted in to the crowd. "You are dismissed until 6, when we will reconvene here and return to Hogwarts. Have a great day, everybody."

Lily watched him closely, smiling to herself. She grinned as he talked, watching his face, listening intently to all his voice inflections, admiring how friendly and yet still professional he was with everyone.

James turned and gave her a smirk, "What are you looking at, nerd?" he laughed, pushing her shoulder gently.

"You're a really good Head Boy." Lily nodded sincerely. "I'm really glad that Dumbledore picked you this year."

James flushed bright red and smiled as big as his mouth would stretch. "Thanks, Evans."

"You're welcome." she grinned then let her face fall to a very serious expression. "But if you ever tell anybody I said that, I'll deny it and make you look like a liar."

"Don't worry, I don't think anybody would believe me anyway." James laughed and rolled his eyes. "Where do you want to go today?"

"Oh Merlin, James..." Lily dropped her smile. "I didn't realize we were doing anything, I totally made plans."

"Oh... no worries, I'm sure Remus and Sirius are free..." He stuttered, running his hands through his hair. Maybe he lost his shot, maybe he really had missed his chance with Lily by not asking this week.

Lily laughed, almost mischievously, but still genuinely enough that James was confused.

"Are you... I'm confused."

"James, I don't have plans. I was waiting all week for you to ask me out!"

James sighed in relief. "Well, geez. You didn't have to give me a heart attack."

"Yes, but it was more fun to do that anyway." Lily laughed it off. "What did you have planned for today?"

"My plan really was," James paused and blushed, knowing how dumb he was about to sound. "to go find a new tea mug for you, since yours broke on rounds."

"You really remembered that?" Lily was touched, she hadn't had a mug in so long she had genuinely forgotten that she needed to buy a new one. That was probably one of the sweetest things a boy had ever thought of for her as a date, every other boy she had dated just stuck to generic dates, which were always fine, but there was something different about James specially thinking of that for her. It made her grin to even think about him planning a date for the two of them, but this was just more than she expected coming from James.

"Of course," He laughed. "Actually, I wasn't going to ask you out last week."

Lily's face dropped, confused and maybe a little offended. Had she been right all along? Had he lost interest?

"I wasn't going to ask you out so soon after a breakup because it just felt wrong."

This was better. Things made more sense now, but why had he brought it up unless he was second guessing himself?

"My original plan was actually to come to Hogsmeade alone on our first trip and buy you a mug in secret then ask you out when I gave it to you." He laughed, kinda nervous that maybe he had given Lily the wrong idea about how much he wanted to date her. "But then I decided I shouldn't do that either because then if you said no, I'd have some random tea mug I didn't need."

Lily laughed. "Why would I have said no?" The thought was comical. She was always flirting with him, why would he ever imagine she would say no?

"You have turned me down Merlin only knows how many times!" his jaw dropped in disbelief.

Lily laughed at him again, rolling her eyes. "But that was before."

"Before what?"

"Before you became _less_ of an absolute prick." Lily smirked, not giving him the satisfaction of two compliments in one day.

"Oh, before I was the _best Head Boy in all of Hogwarts history?" _James teased her, getting closer as he mocked her earlier compliments.

"I did not say that!"

"I saw it in your eyes, Evans." he winked, "You wanted to say it."

Lily bit her lip, not sure how to respond. They were so close at this point she was almost sure he had to be aiming to kiss her, so she swung her head around, brushing across his face with her long red hair.

James stepped back, heart pounding as he realized just how close they had been. Now he was determined to make this the best date Lily had ever been on. He couldn't follow up being a flirtatious asshole with a subpar date. He'd surely never get a second date then, and Mercy, did he want as many as he could get.


	14. WeddingPlans

October 7, 1977

* * *

Lily was stress packing on Friday night when James knocked on her door. He hadn't made many attempts to talk to her outside of their last date and rounds and classes, so she wasn't feeling great about any reason he had to knock on her door now. She figured that maybe he was going to break up with her after their date since it mostly just became an excuse for them to talk more about the war and how different their two lives were outside of Hogwarts.

He had asked about her family and she had told him the truth, that her parents were proud but didn't understand Hogwarts or her wizard life or how much she missed it over the summers and that Petunia was malicious to her and purposefully kept her out of the wedding because she was a witch and didn't want her ruining the day. James talked about how lovely his family was, his parents adopting Sirius even because they were just so loving. His life was so much easier since his parents understood that he was a wizard and had been to Hogwarts themselves. They knew and listened to him complain about classes and wrote owls to him weekly if not even more often than that. They sounded so kind in comparison to her family, who despite doing their best was overbearing and not at all understanding.

Lily swung the door open to reveal a relaxed looking James, in sweat pants and a t-shirt.

"Hey there, Evans." he grinned. "I just wanted to see if you maybe wanted to hang out, since we haven't really done much this week."

"Potter, I'd love to, but I'm packing." she sighed. "You can sit in here and talk while I do that, though?"

"I wouldn't mind that." he shrugged, confused. "What are you packing for?"

"I'm leaving for my sister's wedding in the morning." she ran her hands through her hair and reached up around his neck to hug him. "But I really don't want to talk about that."

James embraced her back, wrapping his arms around her waist and kissing the top of her head. "I guess I didn't realize that was so soon."

"Yes, but it's only a week, so I won't be gone too long at least." She smiled weakly and pulled away, going to pack more.

James sat on her bed, opposite of where she was packing her bag. Lily pulled several pairs of jeans and nice blouses out of her closet and sat them in the bed. She pushed her suitcase to the foot of the bed so she could sit next to James as she folded.

"Are you excited to be home at least for a week?" James tried to find something to ask about as she folded her clothes next to him. "I bet it's got to be nice thinking about no rounds or prefect duties for a whole week."

"I don't know. My parents have been on my case about a new boyfriend so soon and I have to go to Petunia's wedding to that awful boy and Evan wants to meet at some point and try to talk about things. It's just starting to pile up, and I don't think it's going to be any more relaxing than being here."

James tensed up at the thought of Lily going to meet Evan. "Well, rest assured at least everything here will be taken care of." he smiled through his discomfort.

"Actually, about that..." Lily put down the clothes she was folding and positioned herself so she was facing James face on, sitting on her knees and reaching towards his hands to grab them. "I was really hoping maybe you'd want to come with me."

James stared at her in shock; why would Lily want him at this wedding or even to come home with her for a full week.

"I was just thinking you could meet my parents." she expected James to at least say something. "You can say no, I promise I won't be mad."

"I would love to, Evans." James laughed. "I'm just processing a lot right now."

"I mean..." Lily sighed, feeling like maybe she had forced this too quickly on James. "They invited you... Do you want to meet my parents? I know we aren't like.."

"Stop that." James interrupted, pulling her closer by her hands. "I would love to meet them. You are my girlfriend and it would mean the world to me if I got to introduce myself."

Lily blushed and laid her head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead several times before she spoke again.

"I don't remember agreeing to be your girlfriend anyway." she laughed, poking fun at him for saying it so confidently.

"Well, do you disagree with the statement?" he didn't want to give in on it. Lily was his practically girlfriend, he just hadn't gotten around to formally asking her and it had slipped out, but it felt right to say and he didn't want to lose that.

"I didn't say I disagreed, no, just that I don't recall you asking me in the first place." she smirked back at him and pushed herself closer to his chest.

"Fine then." he laughed, just glad she didn't actually disagree with him.

"I'll wait..." she egged him on, hoping for another sarcastic response in return.

"Lily Evans," James sighed and laughed at the same time. "Would you do me the fantastic honor of being my girlfriend?"

She pulled her head back just enough to look him in the eyes and smiled widely. "I would love to be your girlfriend, James."

James leaned down and cupped her face with his hand. He pulled her face all the way up to meet his and kissed her gently. It wasn't exactly how he had planned their first kiss going, but so far, nothing in their relationship had gone as he planned and he was loving every bit of it, so he figured there couldn't be any harm in this not being quite how he wanted it either.

Lily was astonished when James pulled back. She had expected it on their last date and it never came, but she didn't expect it right now. She didn't really have words to say to him, but she was glad he didn't react poorly to her question. Things were moving faster than she expected or had ever experienced before, but it felt good. Things with James were good.

Lily and James exchanged awkward smiles for a long time then Lily broke the silence.

"Dumbledore is disapparating us around 10 tomorrow morning." she spoke at a whisper, unsure of how loud was too loud after what had just happened.

"Okay." James didn't stop smiling. He leaned down and kissed her quickly one more time. "Let me help you finish packing and then you can come and raid my wardrobe and find appropriate clothes for this because Merlin knows I can't dress myself."

Lily laughed and rolled her way out of the bed. She quickly recounted all of the clothes she had already packed and finished up her own packing as she talked to James.

"What are you wearing to the wedding?" James asked.

"I'm really not sure. My mum said she found a dress that she wants me to wear and it's the same colors as the rest of the family, so I guess I will wear that."

"Well, I'm sure you'll look wonderful either way." he laughed as he snuck his way under the blankets. "Do you have to keep it so cold in here though?"

Lily laughed at him. "It is not that chilly."

"It's like ten degrees! I practically have hypothermia just sitting here."

"Hush." Lily rolled her eyes and closed up her suitcase as she finished packing. "We can go to your room if you're that cold."

"Oh, but Evans, I just got cozy under these blankets." he whined, opening up his arms. "Come cuddle with me."

Lily smiled and crawled in her bed up next to James who, despite complaining about how cold he was, was extremely warm to the touch. "There is no way you were cold enough to get under the blankets, Potter." she laughed at him, but not moving away.

"Yeah, but it got you under the blankets with me," James smirked. "And I really just wanted to cuddle and talk."

Lily settled herself up next to him, leg draped across his waist and his arm around her. "What did you want to talk about then?"

"Well, the last time we talked about your family I think I upset you a fair amount." he trailed off. "I just want to know what I need to be on the lookout for and what not to say around them."

"Just be yourself, Potter." she snickered. "They're really nice people, especially my dad and he can't wait to meet you."

"Oh no, I already have a reputation?"

"Not a bad one. They know very little about you actually..." Lily tried hard to think about what she had actually told them. "They know you're the head boy... and they know that we are dating... and my mum knows that your name is James and you have messy black hair?"

"My hair is not messy, it is windswept, thank you." James laughed.

"Hush. My point is you have a pretty blank slate. They don't know much and you're important to me, they'll like you plenty."

"Well, if we're on the note of parents." James took deep breaths to work up enough confidence to continue. "My mum told me to invite you home for Christmas break, and I totally thought it was too soon to ask you, but since I'm meeting your parents I feel like it's only fair that you come meet mine too."

"Sure, what day did she want me to come over?" Lily smiled, this was going well.

"Oh.." James turned bright red with embarrassment. "Since Sirius lives with us and Remus doesn't usually go home for breaks, they're both coming the whole break... And with them of course comes Peter and Marlene, so I just figured maybe you'd want to stay the whole time with us too."

"Oh, wow." Lily gasped. "That's a big offer.. And a lot of people for your parents to house. Are you sure there's room for me? I really don't have it as bad as the rest of them, so I don't want to take up too much space..."

James chuckled at the thought. "We have _plenty_ of room, and my mom loves hosting. She's been begging me to ask you already. I think she's excited to finally have girls in the house."

Lily sat silent for a moment. Plenty of room? How many bedrooms could they possibly have if James was an only child? Would she get there and sleep on the floor for all of break? And what if James's parents didn't like her? She couldn't agree to stay for almost a month if they hated her...

"I can tell you're kind of flustered by the question. It's no rush, I just wanted to pitch the idea and let you know I want you to meet them.." James rushed, trying to recover how nice the conversation had been before. "And obviously, if you only want to come for a day or just dinner or something, I'd love that too.."

"I haven't though about it much but I'm pretty used to seeing you every single day." Lily poked him. "How ever will you deal _without me?_"

"Probably a lot better, honestly." James jokingly rolled his eyes. "No girlfriend to make sure I get up at 4 in the morning to go on rounds?"

"Don't blame me for you being head boy." she scoffed "You _wanted_ this, remember?"

"Hmm.." James pretended over-dramatically to think. "I guess what I'm really going to like being away from is just my head boy duties. You're really not that bad."

"Oh, I'm not _that bad._" Lily laughed.

"No, actually I quite like you." James yawned, it was getting late and they still had to pack his things and probably find someone to take care of their head duties, but he didn't care. He let his eyes drift to closed, cuddled up warm next to Lily. "We should..." he mumbled sleepily.

"We should go pack your clothes, and then we need to go talk to Remus." Lily laughed. "Someone will have to take over for the both of us while we're gone."

"You're so smart, Lils," He laughed, but pulled her in even closer in bed. "But your bed is so comfortable and we could cuddle for like ten more minutes before we have to do that."

"Ten minutes... that's it." Lily laughed and settled in to him. They laid cuddled for much longer than ten minutes before getting up to pack James's things, but neither of them felt any reason to get up. Things felt good for the first time since the attack on the school and they savored it while they could.


	15. Homeward

October 8, 1977

* * *

Dumbledore disapparated Lily and James to Lily's hometown early on Saturday morning. He promised to be back the following Sunday to give Lily plenty of time with family in preparation for the wedding. James was just along for whatever he got himself in to in the week he was home with her though. Dumbledore had agreed- rather eagerly- to let him go home with her, insisting that he could use this opportunity to start scouting for next years head boy a girl. Remus, of course, would assume all of their current duties for their week of absence.

Everything at Hogwarts was taken care of, so Lily didn't know why she was so nervous to leave the place. Every time she thought about going home, her stomach turned over, and now that it was finally happening, she couldn't control her emotions. She had snapped at James once this morning already and in the exact same exchange started crying when she apologized. James had taken it well, comforting her about being stressed and not at all holding it against her, but he didn't understand why she was so nervous to go home.

Dumbledore dropped the two off in a small parking lot, which James tried to piece together in some manner on his own, but the only thing in sight was a small grocery mart with only one employee in sight. No houses were visible in any direction, so maybe Dumbledore left them in the wrong place. Lily could see his confusion and answered on her own terms.

"We can't apparate home because only my parents and my sister know about magic." She explained, trying to laugh to keep it light. "I just think the rest of my family would be confused to see us appear in the driveway with an unknown bearded man who also disappears right after us."

"Right..." James chuckled along. "So then where are we now?"

"Well.. my parents and I arranged with Dumbledore to meet here at a certain time today so they could pick me up. We're only about two kilometers from my house, so they should've been here by now." She glanced around nervously, wondering where they were.

"They're probably just stuck in traffic somewhere then..." James could see the stress in her face and wanted to help.

"Maybe they forgot..." she mumbled, starting to tap her leg anxiously.

"How could anybody forget _you, _Evans?" He teased her. He then pulled her in closer and kissed her forhead before softly whispering in a much more sincere tone. "You're incredible."

Lily smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder, grateful now that she had him to be around all week. She was worried that he wouldn't understand or would make things worse somehow, but even just standing with him in a parking lot felt better somehow than being alone. James was shaping up to be exactly what she needed to face this week, and she only hoped he could handle it as well. She hadn't warned him about her sister potentially making awful comments at him or about him, mostly just explained that all the muggles would have lots of questions about boarding school and she'd lead the way on those. She didn't have time to train him to be non-magic in one night so she did her best by giving him a crash course in actual muggle behavior— not whatever that awful Muggle Studies Professor was teaching him.

After a few cold moments in the parking lot, a small blue vehicle pulled up right next to the couple and rolled its window down. A short old man with silvery-white hair poked his head out of the window, grinning.

"There's my Lily-flower!" He exclaimed. "And... Jack? Is it?"

Lily rolled her eyes and laughed. "Dad, this is _James." _

James tried to laugh it off, unsure of whether he was being serious or not. He didn't know how much or how little Lily had told her parents about him yet, but he knew he likely had a bad reputation around house before this year.

The ride back to Lily's house was uncomfortable, but James felt good about it nonetheless. Lily's dad didn't ask him lots, more just warned him that some of the family members who knew about wizards could be a bit _judgemental. _Still, James has expected this much considering how Lily talked about Petunia. Other than that, they didn't have time to speak about much on the ride. It was short and only allowed for the necessary conversations.

They pulled in to a small driveway, already filled with far more cars than should've been in front of the house for its size. The house couldn't have more than 3 bedrooms judging by the outside, James thought. It was made up of red brick with a white front door and had flowers planted all around outside. The driveway met the street with a painted mailbox featuring two kinds of flowers—which James only assumed were petunias and lilies. It was a quaint looking home, which had more than its fair share of liveliness happening inside.

As they pulled up, Lily and her father joked about the last few tips they had for James.

"And don't forget..." Mr. Evans laughed. "Great Aunt Mary is a hugger."

James blushed in the back seat, his stomach doing an entire gymnastics routine inside of him. He couldn't stop sweating or tapping his foot or picking at his nails. He had to make a good impression now or else they'd never let him come back. Besides— he had only just gotten comfortable enough with her to kiss her last night so if they didn't like him, Lily would probably not even have a hard time dumping him.

The stress continued to build the entire walk inside. James and Mr. Evans split Lily's bags so she didn't have to carry anything, which she smiled about and thanked both of them for.

Mr. Evans opened the door and a wave of hellos ensued. There had to be at least twenty people in the tiniest kitchen and living area James had ever seen. They were eating and standing around talking and chatting until they walked in. A short, older woman with white streaking through her naturally red hair rushed to the door to greet them.

"Oh, Lily!" she exclaimed, embracing her tightly. "It's been so long. Your father and I missed you so much."

So this was Lily's mom. James was trying to piece as much as he could together before he had to start making conversation.

"And you must be James." she turned to him, reaching out for a hug. James put down his bags gently and leaned in. "It is so good to meet you! Lily has told us so much about you."

James couldn't do anything but grin. She had talked about him? What had she said about him?

"I'm so glad to finally meet the two of you as well!" James smiled back, trying to find the right words to say. Lily hadn't really mentioned her parents before, so he wasn't sure what to think about them yet. "Thank you so much for letting me stay."

"Well, I will tell you, James," Mrs. Evans picked up one of his bags and began to lead him. Lily and Mr. Evans followed as she spoke, obviously knowing more where they were going, but still following the same as if they'd never seen the house before. "We are short on space right now with all the family being in town, so I hope you don't mind. I've gotten the cot from the basement set up in Lily's room. The two of you will just need to share her space this week."

Mrs. Evans opened a familiar door and turned the lights, revealing the same room James had seen in the Room of Requirements. "This is where you'll be sleeping." she motioned towards a cot on the floor. "The restroom is attached, right through that door."

James set his things right inside the door. "Thank you so much, Mrs. Evans."

"Oh, please, call me Sarah."

"Thank you then, Mrs. Sarah." James repeated, a little more uncomfortably. He wasn't sure he could fathom calling his girlfriend's mum by her first name just yet.

"Now, make yourself at home. Lily can show you where to put your things, and I'm going back to the kitchen to finish cooking." she scurried off, leaving just Lily and James in the room to unpack.

"So.." James ventured further into the room and Lily sat on the bed, clearing space for him to join her. "You talk about me?" he smirked straight on at her, sitting closely beside her.

"Oh, hush." Lily laughed. "I wanted them to know how important you've been to me the last few weeks."

James flushed bright red, unsure of how to respond. He was floored that she had even talked about him, let alone talked highly.

"I will take the cot," Lily said after an awkward moment sitting in silence. "Actually. I'm sorry I didn't realize we had so many people staying here."

"No, no," James laughed it off. "It's no issue at all. Besides this is your bed."

They sat in awkward silence for another long and painful moment.

"Well, maybe I should go see if mum needs my help..." Lily trailed off, standing up.

"Of course, and..." James stood up quickly after her. "I should come, help out as much as I can."

Lily tilted her head back to meet his eyes when he stood. She hadn't really realized how much taller he was until they were standing so close. He had at least fifteen centimeters on her and she had never paid enough attention to know.

"Yeah, I'm sure mum would appreciate that." Lily grinned and stood up on her toes to plant a small quick peck on James's lips. "Let's go." she laughed off before quickly turning out the door and leaving James momentarily stunned standing next to the bed.

James sighed, gave himself a moment to breathe, and then decided to follow her out the door. Maybe this week wouldn't be as bad as he had thought it would be.

* * *

Hey yall, I am so sorry it has been so long since I posted, but things have been crazy here as I am sure everybody is feeling. I hope that everybody is okay and safe! Please please please! take all the precautions you can during these times and feel free to message me if you need anything-literally anything! Even if that just means needing new friends or needing someone to talk to, I am here! I hope to write more and post as soon as I can, so keep your eyes open this week. I love each and every one of you! Be safe!


	16. Blueberry Pancakes

October 13, 1977

* * *

Morning came too quickly for James. The night previous had been spent talking around the kitchen with Lily, her parents, and Petunia and her fiancé.

Everything that Lily had warned him about her family was true. Her parents tried to explain why it was so important that he remain secretive about magic and Petunia and Vernon sneered, making obnoxious hateful comments the entire time. Lily tried redirecting conversation but it always came back to magic and Hogwarts.

They had good conversations, nonetheless. James and Lily talked about how they had become closer and how they came to be dating now. Lily bragged on James's growth from prankster to head boy and James loved hearing her say all the things he'd only prayed she'd noticed out loud.

They retired to bed just after midnight and had a long conversation from across the room, James on the cot and Lily in her bed. James was tired the entire time, fighting sleep, but wanted more than anything to stay awake and talk to her all night.

Now, it was 6 AM and Lily's alarm clock was blaring. James stood up to turn it off since three full rotations had passed and Lily hadn't budged.

He turned off the clock, hitting the large button on the top and hoping this was something his Muggle Studies professor had gotten right. Lily still did not wake up.

He watched her peacefully breathing in to her pillow, a small puddle of drool forming under her face. He laughed at her messy hair and smooshed against her pillow face and he smiled thinking about how special she was to him— even in this most embarrassing state.

He didn't want to wake her up. Nobody else was awake so why should he? But why then would she set such an early alarm for no reason? He wrestled with his thoughts for a few seconds before she rolled over on her own and mumbled.

"Is it time to get up?" She groaned, not opening her eyes yet.

"Uhm..." James stumbled over his words, aware of how creepy he must've seemed watching her sleep. "It's 6, but nobody else is awake yet..."

Lily didn't say anything, just rolled over to the far side of the bed and held her arm out with the blanket up, inviting James in.

James hesitated. He certainly didn't think she was serious.

"Come here." Lily mumbled, shaking her hand and the blanket.

James sheepishly crawled under, but made sure not to get too close right away. Lily pushed herself under his arm and rested her head on his chest, arms wrapped around him.

"We gotta get out of bed at 6:30" she mumbled, wrapping her legs around his waist.

She was warm and James was more than happy to cuddle with her. "I will keep an eye on the time. You go back to sleep." He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her forehead.

They cuddled for the thirty minutes they had and both fell back asleep. The alarm going off interrupted their cuddles as James rolled to turn it off.

Neither of them wanted to get up, but it was Lily who did first. She sat up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. James watched from his side of the bed. He smiled just seeing her sit there, messy hair, drool crusted to the side of her face, in her pajamas. He wanted to wake up to that everyday. It was soon, but it was then that he decided truly that he had to marry Lily Evans.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She grumbled, pushing herself out of the bed. She trotted to her vanity in the corner where she flipped on a small lamp and sat staring in to a small mirror propped against the wall.

"I just think you look beautiful this morning" James laughed, obviously poking fun at how sleepy she looked. Lily rolled her eyes, but started to take her hair down and brush it.

"Thanks for cuddling with me this morning" she choked out quietly after a moment of getting ready on her own.

"It was really nice." James smiled. "I almost thought you were joking at first."

"No..." Lily smiled but trailed off. "I'm really sorry about last night."

James could see that she was holding in tears but didn't want to make her uncomfortable by addressing it. "I thought last night was great."

"I'm just sorry that they called you that to your face. I thought Vernon would at least be nice this week." She wiped the tears from her eyes. "It seems silly to start an argument over your own wedding."

James walked over to Lily and ran his hands through her hair once. She buried her head in to his stomach and let out a soft stream of tears. James knew that her family stressed her out, but he didn't realize just how bad it must be. He let her cry into his shirt while he played with her hair, making sure to be gentle in what he said for the rest of the day.

* * *

When James and Lily got ready, they headed to the kitchen where they had planned to prepare breakfast for the family. It had been James's idea, but since he'd always had house elves cooking for him, it was up to Lily to _execute_ the plan.

Lily found the idea extremely thoughtful of him. He wanted to impress her family, which he was already doing just by being so charming, but even more so, he wanted to prove himself.

Her parents loved him. He washed dishes after dinner and made sure he talked to every family member equally, which went a long way with some of the older family members who Vernon had been blowing off. He never engaged in arguments with Petunia even when Lily was at her wits end. He was sweet and considerate when planning out his days and this was just another testament to how much he was trying. Lily was impressed, but more than anything grateful that she had invited him. The week would've been awful without him.

James was struggling. He wanted so badly to make good impressions on Lily's family. He was new to the Muggle world and couldn't make normal conversation or talk about his childhood, so he felt awkward. He thought breakfast would help, but again he found himself struggling to fit in because he grew up so differently, with magic and elves to cook for his family.

Lily gathered all the ingredients they'd need from the cabinets while James gathered the measuring spoons (which alone took him as long as Lily gathering all the ingredients.)

James selected the menu for the morning: blueberry pancakes and cinnamon rolls. He just didn't know that those two things required so much work. As Lily laid out the ingredients, he began to wonder if he had made a mistake. Still, he was insistent on making a good impression through the whole week.

It was a long and messy progress, making pancakes, but James and Lily had their laughs through it. They could hear family members getting up, but as they finished baking, still none had come in to the kitchen yet.

James started to pick things up in order to reduce the mess they had made in the kitchen when Lily started laughing.

She pulled her wand from her jumper and started using small spells to expedite the process, which James followed after, doing the same.

It was innocent, just doing magic in order to clean. They had made the food the muggle way, so it couldn't hurt to use simple harmless spells for the dishes.

James was levitating a mug across the kitchen that he had drank his morning coffee out of when he saw it: Lily's grandmother watching from the doorway.

feared.

Her grandmother stood, mouth agape, in the doorway, pointing at James.

"How did you do that?" She gasped.

James stood, mouth open, unable to comprehend what had just happened. Then Lily's grandmother started laughing.

"Gotcha!" she exclaimed.

James chuckled very cautiously. "Youuuu got.. me..."

"Oh, Jimmy." she laughed, sitting now at the barstool across from him. "Of course we know you're magical too. For God's sake, you go to school with Lily!"

James wasn't fond of her calling him Jimmy, but it was better than accidentally exposing a new muggle to magic so he brushed it off.

"I didn't know anybody knew except Ms. Sarah and Mr. Evans." he choked out.

"Well, that boy across the street has funny parents too. And when Lily went to school with him, we all had our suspicions."

"It's a funny story how they all really found out though." Lily chimed in, trying to relieve some stress from James while also cleaning up the broken mug. "I was up late one night at Grandmum's reading, and I was using an illumination spell to read under the blanket."

James laughed, that was such a Lily thing to do.

Silence took over the room. It was awkward for a few minutes until the timer went off.

"Cinnamon rolls are ready!" Lily broke the silence to open the oven and pull them out. The kitchen filled with pleasant smells, blueberries, syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla wafted around as more family members walked in groggily. Few acknowledged the cooks, but all enjoyed the meal.

As the family cycled through, James made small conversation with everyone but Lily. Lily stood off to the side watching the family push through, get pancakes, eat some cinnamon rolls, make a mess, put their dishes back in the sink, and talk to each other. She admired James's ability and willingness to associate with every member of the family, but felt almost jealous at how much everybody loved him. He seemed so happy, it was a shame that she was going to have to burst his bubble.

Today was the day Lily had agreed to go meet Evan for lunch to talk about their breakup and she wasn't looking forward to it. Plus, she and James hadn't discussed it in the slightest since she brought it up, so she wasn't sure how he'd even react.

For the time being, Lily was content with not discussing it, so she slipped upstairs to put on a little makeup before leaving. James didn't see her sneak away or even notice with how busy he was trying to entertain everyone in the room.

* * *

sorry yall that this isn't being posted very reguarly, I am fighting off corona virus right now, so I should be back to normal soon.


	17. Mother Knows Best

October 13, 1977

* * *

Lily was sitting in front of her vanity picking out her moisturizers and foundation for the day when her mum walked in.

"Lil," she interrupted, causing Lily to jump out of shock. "I have to say, this boy may be the one."

Lily turned around and smiled, blushing hard. "I think so too.."

Sarah Evans was never vocal in Lily's life about boys. She usually just let Lily and Petunia choose on their own, so this compliment meant a lot.

"What are you getting ready for?"

"Well, Evan wants to meet up and talk about things..." Lily trailed off, blending in her makeup.

"That sounds like he wants to get back together."

"I'm sure he does, but I'm dating James now, and I like him a lot."

"Maybe, you shouldn't go, Lily."

"Mum, why not?" Lily turned around to look at her, shocked. "It's just lunch and I told him I would."

"I just think you have something really good here, and it would be better not to put any strain on that."

"Did James say something about it?" Lily was nervous now. Had James been talking to her mum behind her back? Was he secretly really uncomfortable with the meet up? Was he mad at her for something she hadn't even done yet?

"No, I just think dredging up the past isn't going to go well..." She dragged on, knowing that she couldn't tell Lily what her true reservations about the interaction were.

"Well, then.." Lily swiveled back in her chair. "I think I need to finish getting ready then."

* * *

James and Lily had a very short conversation about Evan before she left. He assured her that he trusted her and that he would be fine staying alone with her parents, but he hadn't been totally truthful. He was uncomfortable. He didn't love the idea of her being around her ex for so long, so he tried to distract himself. The rest of the family had gone shopping with Petunia to get their nails done and hair cut and other little last minute things they all needed, but James was uninvolved in. He laid in Lily's bed, under the covers, watching Peter Pan, hoping that she wouldn't come back and realize that dating him was a mistake.

Why was he so worried? Lily dumped Evan.. It wasn't messy. It didn't drag out. She just broke up with him because she didn't like him. He had nothing to worry about, and still, Lily's absence made him anxious.

Halfway through the movie, James heard the front door open and then slam. He expected yelling, maybe more fighting between Petunia and some family member who didn't approve of her cutting Lily from the wedding, but the yelling never came.

He heard nothing for a moment, then sniffles. He decided it was none of his business and continued watching the movie, hugging Lily's stuffed animals and snuggled deeply under her blankets, in hopes that if anybody passed the door he could avoid talking. He was stressed enough just thinking about Lily. He couldn't talk to another hurting family member with the state he was in already.

Several minutes passed and James continued to hear the sniffling. He wanted to ignore it, but it kept growing louder and more pathetic sounding.

James gave in and paused the movie to go find out who was crying and where at. He wondered if it were wrong because of how he had just met the family this week. Maybe he shouldn't be so nosey. But then what would Lily think if he just allowed her family members to be upset while she was gone?

James was filled with confusion at this point. No part of his day had made sense. He was upset and trying to be compassionate, but angry at himself for not being able to trust Lily. He gave up looking for the source of the sniffles and went back to Lily's room. He crawled back under the covers and pushed resume on the movie he was watching.

Just moments later, Lily stormed in the room and slammed the door. Her face was puffy and wet with tears.

James sat straight up, immediately alarmed.

"Hey.." he choked out. "How was lunch?"

"Bad." she started to strip her jacket and threw it on the floor next to the bed. "Very, very bad."

"What happened..." James sat up on the edge of the bed so Lily could sit next to him.

"He called me a freak." Lily threw her shoes off to the side and plopped angrily on the bed. "Petunia told him I'm a witch, and he called me a freak."

"Oh... Lil..." James wrapped his arm gingerly around her. "I don't know what to say."

"Of course you don't!" Lily snapped, yanking herself away from his arm. "You'll never understand what it's like not to fit in! I don't belong here. I'm not a muggle. Hell, I'm not even good enough to be a bridesmaid to my own sister!"

She stood up and started flinging her arms around. "I'll never fit in in the wizarding world either! I'm not magic enough to be Head Girl and I'm certainly not magic enough to be dating the perfect pureblooded head boy."

James sat, mouth agape, unsure of what to say.

"I won't ever belong anywhere because I'm just a _mudblood FREAK._"

Lily was sobbing at this point, the room around her was a mess. At some point in all of the chaos, her magic had flung sweaters and trinkets around.

"Lily.." James started towards her, hands out gently. "None of that is true."

"What do _you_ know? You're rich _and_ popular _and_ pureblood! You can do no wrong. You're so perfect my own _family_ likes you better than me! You have it so easy."

James grabbed her wrists, trying to keep her from flinging them any more as more and more things flew around.

"James..." she pulled her hands to her face, covering her mouth. "I'm so sorry.."

James pulled her in to a hug, mad enough to scream, but avoiding it. He didn't have it easy, but he couldn't get in to that. Looking around the room, it was destroyed. Things had flown everywhere. Lily was either madder than he'd ever seen someone or stronger than any witch he'd ever seen. Maybe a combination of both. Whichever it was, he couldn't afford her being angry with him while he was a guest in her home.

He held her for a long time while she cried. They said nothing. They didn't acknowledge the tears or the anger or the harsh words Lily had used, just stood in silence.

When she was done crying, James sat her down on the bed and walked over to the vanity. He grabbed a washrag and makeup remover and sat by her on the bed. He wet the rag and started to wipe the mascara running down her face.

"Do you wanna watch a couple of movies until everybody gets back?" James asked tenderly, hoping not to enflame the situation.

"Actually..." Lily stumbled. "Can we talk about it.. I didn't mean all of that that I said and I'm sorry, James."

"I know..."

"I just am upset that it feels like I can't do anything right ever."

"Lily, I don't know if I can talk about this right now." James interrupted her. "You know how much I love talking to you and listening to what's happening in your life, but I don't want to argue about it today."

"I don't want to argue either.." Lily didn't know how to respond. James had never been mad at her before. "I just wanted to apologize. I was out of line."

"Thanks, Lils." he nodded, still visibly upset. "Let's just talk about something else..."

"Yeah, of course. Why don't we put on our pajamas and just watch movies until dinner?"

"I'd like that, Evans." James smiled and pulled her in for a hug. He embraced her for a long time before pulling back and cupping her face in his hand. "I'm sorry if I was rude. I'm just not in a good mood and I just don't know if I can stand to argue with you."

Lily leaned up and kissed James softly. "Thank you for being here."

James smiled and pulled her in for more kissing. He felt his whole body relax as he kissed her. The anger left him. He couldn't remember why he was mad at someone with such a soft face and soft lips. He ran his hands through her hair, enjoying every moment.


	18. The Wedding

October 15, 1977

* * *

Saturday morning had the entire household stressed, and James could feel it radiating off of Lily. She was bothered by every small conversation with her sister. James wanted nothing more than to hug her and calm her down.

Lily had rollers in her hair by seven in the morning. She was putting on her makeup by ten. Pictures were at noon. The wedding was at two. Lily and James would be home at Hogwarts by seven to prepare for the next week.

Lily had her hair in rollers and makeup done with her sister and the bridal party in the room down the hall. She came back to her bedroom, where James was sitting on the bed after his shower, hair still wet. She held a bagged dress by its hanger in one hand and shut the door behind her with the other.

"Good morning, sunshine. Glad to see you got up." Lily smiled at James. She hung the dress on a towel hook on her bathroom door and sat next to him.

James laughed and kissed her gently. "You look happy this morning, what's going on?"

"Am I not permitted to be happy?" Lily didn't stop grinning and kissed him again, landing quick pecks in between breaths.

James smiled, not wanting to burst the bubble. He grabbed her by her waist and continued kissing her.

"James..." Lily was grinning from ear to ear while pulling away. "I'm going to be a bridesmaid."

"Wait, I thought you said Petunia didn't want you to..."

"Well, my mum and Petunia gave me the dress this morning, and Petunia said she wanted me up there with her after all. Of course, I'm sure my mum pressured her into giving me a spot, but still, I can't believe-"

James cut her off with another peck on the mouth. "That's wonderful, Lils. I'm happy for you."

"Well, bridal party pictures are in half an hour, but I wanted to get dressed in here and talk to you for a few minutes." Lily ran her hand through James's still wet from a shower hair.

"Will you help me dry my hair actually?" James asked, sheepishly. "I know what a blow dryer is from class, but I don't know how to use one, and I already got us in trouble with magic once this week."

Lily smiled and pulled him up from the bed. She was bubblier and more affectionate than James had ever seen her. She pulled him in to the bathroom and sat him facing the mirror in a stool. She played with his hair for a moment, running her fingers across his scalp and up from the nape of his neck and sending chills down his spine.

She was gentle when she dried his hair. The air was warm and her hands in his hair felt so nice that when she stopped, he was almost disappointed that there wasn't any left to do.

If only he could do this everyday, he thought. It would be nice, just to be close enough to Lily to get out of the shower every day and see her, to sit in the bathroom with her while she got ready, to just exist in the same area as her during the mundane things. He could catch himself daydreaming about how nice it would be to just live with Lily in the world outside of Hogwarts. He wanted to spend time with her like this. He just knew that it would be a long time before that could happen.

The recent attacks on muggleborns gave James reason to worry about Lily, and worse even gave him reason to believe his family wouldn't accept her. They had always been kind and loving and welcomed all of his friends regardless of background, but it felt different with Lily. She was muggleborn and he was in love with her at a time that marrying her could get them both killed. He didn't care, but seeing how much her family affected her made him worry that she would give up on his family if they started to imply his worst fears.

Lily's voice snapped James out of his thoughts. "Will you help me zip this?"

James hadn't even noticed that she had gone and put her dress on. In the meanwhile she had also unpinned her hair so it was now curled and cascading down her back.

The dress was a dark shade of green and was cut in a halter style with a flowy bottom that reached the floor. It was simple and elegant, and Lily looked phenomenal in it. James was starstruck.

"James.. can you help me zip this?" Lily laughed, turning her back to him to zip.

"Shit, yeah, Lils." James shook his head and grabbed the zipper, pulling it up quickly. He dropped his voice as she turned towards him. "You look really good."

"Thanks." Lily's cheeks flushed bright red.

Lily didn't know how to take James's compliment. Usually, she'd renounce it and call him a name for objectifying her, but it was nice and now that they were dating, it didn't feel as driven as before. She just stood there smiling and blushing instead.

"Well..." Lily stammered. "I have to get to pictures before they decide I can't be a bridesmaid afterall." she joked and kissed James one last time before walking towards the door.

As she was closing the door behind her she peeked her head right back in. "And you look very handsome today, by the way." she laughed and closed the door, leaving James completely flustered.


	19. AWitchInTheFamily

October 15, 1977

* * *

"The reception was beautiful" Lily's mother gushed in the kitchen. It was much less stressful in the house now that Petunia and Vernon had left. The conversation carried outside through open windows since the weather was too nice to pass on.

James was helping put away chairs with Mr. Potter. It was quiet while they worked, but there wasn't much to do or speak about, so it went fairly quickly.

Lily was inside talking with extended family before they had to leave. Dumbledore would be there to meet them in a few hours, so Lily was making up for all the time she'd miss with her family until Christmas break.

James put the last of the chairs up and headed inside. He didn't feel comfortable heading to the kitchen with everybody, so he went to the living room where the younger kids were playing. He sat on the couch and observed as Lily's young cousins played in the center with a handful of building blocks and rolling cars.

James wasn't watching too closely, but he could hear the conversation happening between the primary school kids. He tuned in to their game when one girl boasted about her 'magic trick'.

He'd heard of what Muggles called Magic tricks, but they weren't real magic, just illusions of the eye. Still, James was intrigued to watch.

The little girl waved her hands around dramatically to wind up the crowd of her three younger male cousins. Then, right in front of James's eyes, a small roller car began to float.

He blinked, made sure it was still happening. Then he watched as the roller car floated higher and higher. He stood up and turned around towards the kitchen. He had to tell Lily what he saw.

"Evans.. Evans!" He blabbered on as he rushed in to the kitchen.

Lily turned around, smiling. "Potter, half the people here have that last name, you'll have to be more specific."

"Lily," he stammered, blushing. "I think you should come see something..."

"Is everything alright?" She gave him concerned looks, but put her drink down and stood up to follow him.

"Yeah, everything is fine. I just need to talk to you for a moment." James was smiling, trying hard to reassure the rest of her family that he wasn't crazy right before he left.

Lily followed James out of the kitchen and in to the hallway. "What's wrong, Potter?" She whispered and put her hand on his chest.

"Lily, there's a witch in your family." James's eyes were massive at this point.

"Yeah.. I am a witch... in my family."

"No.. I mean another witch."

"And what could possibly make you think that there's another witch in my family?" Lily crossed her arms, frustrated.

"I just saw her do magic.." James exclaimed at this point gushing his excitement screams as much as possible. "Just now, in the living room."

"What do you mean you saw her do magic? What kind?"

"She was making the roller cars float. I swear Lily, I just saw it."

Lily turned towards the living room and stomped in. She sat gently on the carpet next to the kids, who had returned to normal play.

"Hey, Emily..." Lily started. James stood in the doorway, watching diligently. "James told me you had a really cool trick you showed the boys."

"She can make cars fly!" One of the boys perked up. They started speaking over each other talking about how cool it was out of excitement.

"Well, let's see it then." Lily laughed.

"Well... it's not very good." Emily shyed away. "I can't make it fly very high."

"That's okay. I want to see it anyway."

Emily did her whole showcase again, starting with the crazy arms and finishing with a small levitating car, floating up towards the ceiling.

Lily sat, dumbfounded for a moment. "Emily, that was wonderful! Where did you learn that?"

"Well, I just started one day playing with a hair tie, and I practiced really hard." She twiddled her fingers together, nervously.

"Emily, you keep practicing this stuff. You're going to be really good at it one day." Lily was grinning from ear to ear by the time she walked out of the living room.

Lily marched straight to her room, James not far behind her, and slammed the door.

"A _witch _in the family!" She exclaimed. "James, there's a witch in our family!"

James sat on the bed, watching Lily pace in excitement and honestly just happy that she was happy.

"Merlin, James!" Lily stooped where she stood. "We have to talk to her parents.. Of course, they're muggles, they won't understand at first."

"Woah... I don't know if we're allowed to do that, Lils."

"Well, why not?"

"There's a lot of laws about exposing magic to Muggles.. and what if she isn't a witch? Then what?"

"You saw it yourself, James. She did magic. She has magic in her. She's a witch just like me."

"Lily, I'm just saying. Things turned out alright with you and you didn't know until you were eleven. Trust that it'll be alright for her too."

Lily sighed heavily and plopped down on the bed. "Fine." She muttered.

"Evans, you're gonna wrinkle your dress sitting like that." James joked, gently pulling her back up by her hands. "Beside, I have a question for you."

Lily allowed herself to be pulled in to a hug. She wrapped her arms around James's neck loosely and glanced up at him.

"We didn't get to dance today, but..." James trailed off.

"But what, Potter?" Lily chuckled.

"When my parents were at Hogwarts..." James began only to be laughed at by Lily. "They has a traditional sort of Christmas ball. All the students would pick nice dresses and dress robes and they gathered in the great hall for a few hours. It's actually where my parents first kissed..."

"Yeah..." Lily stopped laughing out of newfound genuine interest.

"I thought maybe we could try to convince Dumbledore to bring that back. At least for this year."

"James, I think that's a beautiful idea." Lily beamed. "As Headboy, I'm sure you could recruit help setting it up."

"Oh no, Evans. People can't know it was my idea. I have a reputation to uphold."

Lily chuckled. "I think your reputation will be fine. Besides, wouldn't you rather be known as a fantastic head boy rather than a mischievous prankster?"

"Why can't I be both?"

Lily sighed and rested her head on James's shoulder. They swayed softly together for what felt like eternity.

"So then Lily Evans..." James whispered in to her ear. "Will you go to the ball with me?"

Lily pulled her head back, smiling softly. "I'd love to, James Potter."

* * *

James and Lily arrived at Hogwarts just in time for dinner. They walked in together to sit with their friends, who had much to catch them up on from the week prior.

Remus was first to notice the couple walk in. "Look who's back." He grinned.

Sirius perked up from his food immediately. "Prongs!" He nearly jumped from his seat.

"Good to see you too, Sirius." Evans teased.

"No offense to you, Lily, but I haven't seen James in a week. I haven't been away from him that long since first year."

"How was the wedding?" Remus inserted, cutting their banter.

"It was good. Lily got to be a bridesmaid after all." James bragged on her, since she wouldn't for herself.

"Yes, and my family was absolutely taken by James." Lily rolled her eyes jokingly. "I think they'd disown me and adopt him if we ever broke up."

"You guys better not break up. This bloke was insufferable enough when you wouldn't date him to begin with. I can't imagine what he'd be like if he lost you!" Sirius spoke through the food in his mouth.

Lily smiled, but quickly avoided the subject. She and James hadn't talked about her yelling at him a few nights prior and she didn't want to assume that things were fine. He had reason to be angry with her and was just avoiding argument until they got back. Now that they were home though, she was scared he'd reveal his true thoughts and end things.

Maybe it was a silly thing to worry about, but Lily couldn't help it. She had really messed up yelling at him. And all over things he couldn't control. It wasn't his fault he was rich or a pure blood. She had just been angry with her family and their constant bickering at her and angry with Hogwarts for allowing students to get away with hateful acts towards Muggleborns and angry with wizarding society for even creating a word such as Mudblood for her to be called. It wasn't yelling at James so much as it was yelling at everything he represented. She regretted it and dreaded the conversation that was coming, but knew she had to apologize for it.

"Right, well. Things here have been good." Remus popped back in. "No issues with prefects or rounds. However, I didn't host a meeting this week seeing as I had nothing to discuss."

"Thank you again, Remus, for saving our asses and standing in this week." James added.

"It was kind of fun. Although, I would never willingly take morning rounds. The two of you must be exhausted all the time."

"Well, Lily is in bed by the time the sun sets practically." James laughed, poking fun at Lily who was now being oddly silent.

"Well, you don't want to see me if I don't get a full 8 hours, Potter."

"Nothing could be worse than an angry and tired Evans." Sirius laughed. "I'd be surprised if Potter lasted ten minutes around her. She'd hex his mouth shut for talking too much."

"Don't give her any ideas, Sirius." James threw

his arm around her. "I still have the whole year left of morning rounds with her."

* * *

After dinner, James and Lily walked back to the head commons almost in silence. They exchanged a few mere words about how much they missed their friends and how nice it was to be back.

It wasn't until they were past their painting and in the security of their own common room that Lily blurred out.

"James, we really need to talk about this."

"Evans, I don't think we do..." James continued towards his door, trying not to get in to it. "It really isn't a big deal, I promise."

"But it _is_ a big deal and I'm sorry." Lily was almost in tears as James started to open his door. "Please just talk to me about it."

"If it will really make you feel better to talk about it, Lily." James turned and let his door close again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I'm pureblooded and I'm sorry that people have used that against you for your entire life, but I don't think it's fair to put that against me because _just like you _I didn't get to choose my family tree."

"I know..." tears started pouring down Lily's face. "I wasn't angry at you, not really. I just let my anger get out of hand because of what Evan said."

"What he said to you was wrong, Lily, and it wasn't true. It was hateful and he only said it to hurt you. You know that."

"I know and that's why I was so angry. I was mad at him for saying it and mad at Petunia for telling him and even madder at myself for allowing it to bother me and I took it out on you and I'm sorry."

"It's fine now."

"You were nothing but wonderful all week..." Lily softened her tone. "And I'm really glad you came with me, but I completely understand if you want to end this because of what I said. I was out of—"

James shook his head vigorously. "Evans, you've lost your mind."

Lily couldn't form words, only sniffled at his sharp tone.

"No, seriously." James grabbed her by the hands and led her to sit on the loveseat in front of the fire by him. "Did you really think that I'd want to break up with you because you called me spoiled?"

"You don't want to break up?" Lily wiped tears off her cheeks, confused as to why he'd take such a mean tone only to back up and say he wanted to keep things going.

"No, Lily, I don't. I really like you and calling me a pureblood rich kid isn't going to change that. You were right about everything you said; I just don't like to think about those things because it's what everybody has always told me. I know I'm rich and I'm a pureblood and everything has been handed to me and I hate it. I worked hard for a lot and saying those things has always made me feel like it didn't matter because all I ever was to anybody was some spoiled rich pureblooded brat."

"That's not how I see you at all, James." Lily moved closer. "You're a fantastic wizard and a caring friend and a great Quidditch player and so much more than just that."

"Thanks, Lils..." James Starr's down at their hands intertwined in his lap. He slowly raised one of her hands and kissed the top of it softly. "You're amazing, yknow."

"James..."

"No, I mean that. Everything awful that anybody has ever said about Muggleborns, you completely contradict. You're the smartest and most talented witch I know."

Lily flushed bright red, left absolutely speechless.

"We don't have to talk about this anymore if you don't want." James whispered after a moment of silence.

"Yeah, I ought to get to bed or else I may actually hex your mouth closed in the morning"

James laughed and kissed her gently. "Good night, Lily Evans."

Lily stood up and trailed towards her door. "Good night James Potter."


	20. Patronus

October 24, 1977

* * *

Lily plopped down at the lunch table next to James. She was very clearly upset and there were whispers down the table, but James didn't know what could be making her so upset.

Remus followed not far after and sat down, much gentlier than Lily had. He greeted James and Sirius who had been quietly avoiding the tension by talking about the first Quidditch match that was only a week away.

"Lily, it isn't as big of a deal as you think." Remus set his things down directly next to her.

"I don't want to talk about it, Remus." Lily spat and opened a book of her own, hoping that the table would take a hint. Fellow seventh years down the table continued their laughter and whispering about what had happened just a few minutes prior in their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson.

"What's wrong, Evans?" Sirius chimed in. "Didn't get a spell on the first try for once?"

James shot him a dirty glance from across the table.

"I was only joking.." Sirius backed off. "What's actually wrong, you know we won't judge you."

"Nothing is wrong, Sirius. Everything is perfectly fine." Lily smiled and slammed her book. "Now, I'm going to go study in the library for the rest of lunch. I'll see you all in Potions."

She picked her things up and stormed out of the Great Hall, surrounded by just as many whispers as she had come in with.

James and Sirius turned quickly to Remus since obviously he had known what upset her so badly.

"Bloody hell, what was that about, Moony?" James perked up. "I haven't seen her that upset since she found out what Muggles Studies _actually _studied."

The table laughed for a moment before Remus spoke back up.

"In Defense Against the Dark Arts today, we were learning how to cast patronus charms." He began, everybody leaned in ready to hear just how bad her attempt must've gone. "Lily went first, of course, and her first try was excellent. She got compliments from the professor and all."

"So then why did she have her knickers in such a twist?" Sirius laughed, playfully hitting James's arm. "Bad night, eh?"

"Hush." James laughed. "What was wrong then? What happened, Remus?"

"Well, after a few students, Severus walked up to cast his. He did, full patronus, just like instructed. It was really magnificent, pranced around the room before disappearing."

"So then she's mad that Severus did a better job than her?"

"No, Sirius. She's upset because Professor Marigold made a big speech about complimentary patronuses and how if two individuals have complimentary patronuses, they are in a sense soulmates…" The table fell silent as Remus paused. "She and Severus both produced full bodied doe patronuses."

James shook his head. "No, no. That has to be a mistake. Lily and Severus aren't _soulmates._" He sneered.

* * *

"Mate, of course I know that, but the whole class was talking about it and it really upset Lily because now everybody is talking about how they should be together and not the two of you."

"Well, that's bullshit! Of course Lily should be with me. Severus gave up his chances when he decided to join forces with You-know-who. And why would she be so upset about it, she knows he's a scumbag anyway."

"Well perhaps she's mad because she doesn't want people associating her with that scumbag, James. She's been trying all year to prove that she's smart on her own already. It can't help for everyone to think they're soulmates." Remus protested.

"Well of course she's smarter than him." Sirius chimed. "Any bloke would know that just looking at him."

"Wait a damn minute." James pushed his hands in to the table. "Why do you know all of this? Lily has never mentioned any of this to me."

"Potter, don't be dense. Lily and I have been friends longer than you and she have. She started talking to me about it last year and we wrote about it all summer. Besides, anybody who pays attention could tell how hard she's trying to be the best head girl."

"Well, I thought that was just Lily..." James mumbled. "She's always trying to outshine everyone."

"She isn't trying to outshine anybody, James. She's just always been a little insecure about being from a muggle family and Severus calling her a Mudblood only made it worse." Remus was fighting hard to convince James that she wasn't being unreasonable, but it was hard seeing as he himself thought she was being unreasonable.

"Well, still, she should know that having similar patronuses isn't indicative. And besides, you said that Marigold said _complentary _not identical."

"Well, you go tell her that, Sirius, because she wouldn't listen to me." Remus slammed his fist down. "It's my fault."

"Bloody hell, Remus, what do you mean by that." James gasped.

"If I weren't a werewolf, you'd never have become Animagni and your patronus wouldn't be a stag. Then Lily, since she's so obviously your soulmate, wouldn't be going through this."

"Listen mate, I appreciate the thought, but Snivellus has always been obsessed with her. Even if my patronus was a chicken and hers were a hen, his would still be a hen just like hers. You didn't cause this."

"I just can't help but feel like it." Remus burried his head in his hands.

"Mate, when is the moon. You're not acting like yourself." Sirius put his hand gently on Remus's shoulder.

"It's on Wednesday... but don't worry about it. Lily told me you three have a big test in Charms on Thursday and she needs help studying. You two should work with her. Peter and I will be fine."

"Remus, I don't know how many times we have to tell you, we aren't abandoning you." Sirius laughed.

"Yeah, you dense bloke. You're stuck with us now." James chuckled. "I didn't do all that work becoming an Animangus to help Lily with her Charms work."

"Merlin's Beard, Lily." Remus snapped his head up. "James, you should go find her before Potions."

"Yeah, right? Guess I should since she's my girlfriend and all." James laughed, remembering how the conversation all came about to begin with. "I'll see you two later."

* * *

When James got to the library, Lily was sitting in the far corner, face buried in her charms work and scrawling away with her quill. He gently walked over and sat next to her without saying anything. He inched his chair close enough that he could put a hand on her knee under the table and lay his head on her shoulder.

"Did Remus tell you?" Lily choked out.

"Yeah, he told me."

"I'm really sorry, James." Lily wiped her eyes and James sat up.

"I don't think you need to be." James rubbed circles on her knee with his thumb. "I actually was hoping you'd want to go with me tonight to the Quidditch field. I think there's something I need to show you."

"The Quidditch field?" Lily asked, perplexed.

"Yeah, it's something real important to me but I need to know that nobody is around us when I show you."

"Oh..." Lily paused. "Alright. The quidditch fields after the prefect meeting then?"

"Sounds perfect." James beamed and kissed her cheek. "You're really warm though..."

"Warm?" Lily presses her hand to her own cheek. "What do you mean?"

"I just mean you're warm. Maybe you're running a fever. We should go to the hospital wing for that."

"James, we'll miss potions then." Lily was clearly missing something.

"Well, if you're _sick, _Evans, we should at least make sure you aren't around any other students." James winked.

"Oh..." Lily gasped when she understood. "Skip potions?"

"Yes, Evans.." James chuckled. "Skip potions. You've had a bad enough day. Let's just relax before the meeting. We can take a nap or talk or study charms... whatever you want."

"A nap doesn't sound bad at all..." Lily trailed, closing her Charms work. "But we can't just skip potions..."

"Sure we can. Slughorn _loves_ you. He won't write us a detention if you tell him you're not feeling well." James scooted closer, face almost pressed against Lily.

Lily's face slowly transformed from her miserable look to a smirk. "Alright, well, since I'm feverish then I should go lay down."

"And since I've been around you for a whole week, any virus you have, certainly I also got..."

James and Lily perked up and exited the library, occasionally coughing and complaining loudly of their headaches as they walked to their dorms, so everybody would know they weren't just playing hookie.

James stated the password and the painting swung open. The weather outside was dreary, so it was dark inside except for the light of the fireplace.

"Wow... this really was the perfect day to skip potions, James." Lily chirped as she plopped down on the couch in front of the fireplace.

James joined her seconds later and in just a few moments they were laid down, cuddling with a blanket thrown across the two of them.

Lily fell asleep quickly, comforted by James playing with her hair. James stayed up as long as he could to try to watch time, but ultimately fell asleep just moments after Evans.

* * *


End file.
